In the early days of space flight ages ago it served no other purpose than being the means of travel between two planets. But in the last decades space travel has become much more. Thousands of people now live most of their lives solely in space, calling some space station their home instead of a planet, or a country. Space stations have increased in size, having grown into full-fledged habitats with food production units and factories able to satisfy every need of the populace.
Naturally, these cities in space require huge amount of materials and minerals to sustain and support themselves. If they’re lucky enough to orbit a populated planet they are seldom in want of anything, but others must fend for themselves. Planetary mining of uninhabited planets and moons is vitally important for any manufacturing station that wants to compete on equal footing. Although such stations do exist without the support of a mineral rich stellar body below it, such station must rely on minerals being transported to them, which is always more cumbersome and expensive. This has made uninhabited but mineral rich planets gold mines often in the literal sense for anyone aspiring to large-scale manufacturing.
One such mineral-rich planet is Konrakas in the system of Shintaht. The system, originally surveyed and named by the Caldari, lies close to Amarr space and has been claimed by both the Caldari and the Amarriasn, although neither has yet settled the system. Konrakas has an extremely chaotic climate. The seasons vary greatly, ranging from icy cold to scorching heat. Ocean tides are dramatic and floods are very common. Winds howl constantly over the landscape, frequently reaching hurricane speed. The gravitational forces also cause earthquakes regularly, as well as volcanic eruptions.
The planet is, not surprisingly, completely lifeless. The natural forces shaking the planet have also caused many rare and valuable minerals to shift close to the surface, making the planet a mineral heaven. These same natural forces, however, make it extremely difficult to mine these minerals, and neither the Caldari nor the Amarrians have yet found the willingness to make the heavy investment needed to start a planetary mining operation on Konrakas.
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When the dropships came, Jeb and I counted down the seconds to our deaths - if not from the invading forces, then from our own people, some of whom had sworn to die on their feet and take everyone with them, invader and traitor both. The traitors, apparently, were those unwilling to die rather than be yoked to the Caldari wheel.
But the dropships landed, leveling entire hills with their impact, and once their chutes opened and the armies within marched out to meet us - the sun glinting off their metal carapaces, the dust rising in clouds from the synchronized thumps of their feet - nobody put up much of a fight.
Jeb and I were still behind cover - there really didn't seem much point anymore, for if we'd wanted to be safe, we should have long since run for the mountains - and we watched as the Caldari troops marched over and through. They did not seem bound by the same gravity as we were.
We waited for shots that were never fired. A few people rushed madly towards the troops, some bearing weapons or facsimiles of same. I don't know if the Caldari were under orders to hold their fire or if they were merely that disciplined, but the last I saw of our rebels was a rising trail of dust, dwindling to nothing. They were enveloped by the army, disarmed and locked down. Some were left lying on the ground, handcuffed and immobile; others were carried, furious and unwilling, to the nearest bush or body of water and unceremoniously thrown in. The greatest offensive action they took against our people was gagging a few of the loudest rebels, which was likely more a relief to me than it was to them. There is nothing so unbearable as a shrieking rebel knowingly reduced to a powerless effrontery of words.
In a whisper Jeb asked me whether we were lost, and I didn't know what to tell him. A part of me - the rebellious part, I supposed, though it didn't feel quite so - wanted to say yes. Another, more sensible part suspected that we might have a new world on our hands.
***
We were a backwater colony of the Gallente Federation, established so far back in time that historical records on our foundation were inconclusive. Our leaders, such as they were, maintained that this proved we had been there for a long time. Truth was, we'd likely just kept shoddy records.
For most of us it hadn't been the easiest life to live. Resources had always been scarce, and what little we eked out was strongly controlled by our local government. We did a smattering of trade with neighboring planets, but for the most part we kept our business to ourselves .Our government's fear of offworld dependency led to exorbitant taxation on all interstellar business, and the populace mostly, if grudgingly, supported this policy. In truth, we had learned not to desire what we could not easily acquire. We were a closed system - interconnected, complex and opaque - and in the myriad of monopolies, favoritism, backroom dealing and nepotism that we allowed to take place, we convinced ourselves that this was the only way to run a planet, and we took a strange pride in it; as if our corruption were emblematic of our independence.
The factional wars caught us by surprise. On dark nights we would look up at the stars and see some of them moving at great speed, others bursting into flames. It was the capsuleers, of whom I'd only ever heard stories, engaged in battles I could not even begin to imagine. Fighting over control of territories - fighting, to my amazement, over us.
We were not used to being the object of anyone's plans, much less fought over with such ferocity. Reports would trickle in of Gallentean successes, Gallentean conquests and Federation Navy domination, which made us all the more nervous: We were not stupid, and even the more fervently nationalistic of us knew full well that we Gallente, for all our strengths, would not be doing all our fighting in Gallente systems such as our own if we were on any kind of path to victory.
The trickle eventually dried up, and we began to speak in hushed voices. Not long after, the Caldari came.
***
The highest echelon of Gallentean rule over our colony had been a unit of elitism unto itself. Neither I nor Jeb nor anyone like us could ever have hoped to breach it. At most, what we could have expected were individual rewards for services well rendered: perks and bonuses, applied like grease to our ever-turning wheels. It was obviously not a perfect system, and it was certainly not fair, but it worked for what it was. We could live with the strings so long as we felt that the right ones were being pulled at the right time, and that they were, within this opaque system, at least tolerantly transparent.
Nonetheless, it was a poor system for a poor world, and when the Caldari came I knew I was a traitor, because in my heart I welcomed them. If it had been us descending on their world, we would have roared in with bullets; but they came in silence, swift and efficient, and with the simplest of strokes they lopped the head off our ailing body.
We protested, of course, some of us more viciously than others, but we did so in the knowledge that we couldn't possibly hope to enact any kind of change. As Gallenteans now subject to foreign rule it was utterly frustrating, but as individuals on a corrupt backwater colony it was - for me, at least - a guilty relief, couched in the hope that the new administration might bring some manner of equality and opportunity. While someone in the middle of the Federation proper might have felt more enamored with their rulers, and more energized to fight back against the invaders, out here the only thing that had made us Gallente were the banners on our governmental buildings, and the unspoken policies that it was every man for himself.
The new rule moved in. Our lives went on. Jeb and I had the same old jobs with the same superiors and the same responsibilities, and at night we each dreamt the same familiar dreams, perhaps a little clearer now, of riches and opportunities. It took a while for everything to settle, but eventually it did: The protests stopped, people kept working for their pay, and anyone who attempted in their own small way to overthrow the system was either imprisoned - briefly, without repercussions or mistreatment - or simply ignored.
And to my speechless disappointment, the Caldari - the efficient, disciplined, lockstep Caldari - began to screw it all up.
The first mistake they made was in announcing the new governorship. Gallente are used to having a voice, however much it may be ignored. Our new governor, a Caldari diplomat apparently experienced in running Caldari asteroid colonies, was installed along with his team of representatives as soon as he arrived planetside. Local broadcasts informed us of his expertise and implied that he would lead us to great things, but fell silent when it came to the details of his position: How long he would be installed, what the extent of his powers under the current regime, and exactly what changes might be forthcoming. The lack of information, coupled with the utter disinterest in involving the local population, did more to stir local rebellion than any invasive action could have. We had known we were powerless from the moment the armies landed, but that was a knowledge bound to its time, fixed in the moment of the silver armies marching towards us. This new development rang the first note for our future, and implied that our lives from here on would be subject entirely to the whims of an unknown, unknowable force.
All they would have needed to do was hear us out. Ask our opinion, pretend to listen; and all would have gone so much better. Instead, they doomed themselves to rule over a populace that was already pessimistic over its future, and saw no reason to aid its masters in improving their own lot.
It went on like this. The navy might have executed a clear-cut takeover, but the bureaucracy virtually stumbled its way into power. Gods knew our old rule had not been faultless, but at least we had grown inured to its flaws. Then the Caldari had come in and done the worst thing they could: Brought about change, but extinguished the hope that it might be for the better.
Jeb and I kept a close eye on the new power, as anyone else would. We read the council minutes, spoke courteously to representatives, and kept our mouths shut while taking in all the information we could.
The more we learned, the clearer it became that this was not a failure of the meritocracy, that guiding light of the new Caldari rule.
Instead, it was the fault of our new governor, who had overseen every process following the invasion itself, and who was clearly not fit for rule. His people were just as corrupt as the old rule, but possessed neither the personal connections nor the deep understanding of colony life to make the community function underneath all that graft.
The Gallentean in me took over.
I kept an eye on everything, saw the myriad of problems, and noted down ways to fix them. My own job, as a low-level facilitator, afforded me an opportunity to travel, so I made the most of it. I did not ask questions about work or anything else that might be deemed suspicious; but then, I didn't have to. All I did was ask people about themselves. Eventually their talk moved on to work, and most all were entirely happy to tell me of all the wrongs that could be righted, as people tend to be when they're talking to someone who they believe is just as powerless to act as they are.
It took weeks, and the only one I shared it with was Jeb, who seemed to agree with most of what I thought. Long, sleepless nights of planning; and long, careful days of finding the right people to talk to, the right chinks in the armor to slowly dent.
Eventually the call came in. The governship -the governor and a good deal of his entire team - were to be replaced. The colony had stabilized, they said - which was true - and it was now possible for them to pull out the governing force and replace it with local people. All of this was true. Not a mention was made of the utter failures that had taken place during the governor's brief time in office. They were not important any longer.
Names were mentioned. Mine came up; once, then again, then often enough that the voices lifted me to power.
***
I'm not at the top yet - the apex belongs to the Caldari - but I've risen to one of the highest positions a Gallentean can hold on this colony. Jeb's not far behind me.
It's been a strange time. It has taught me more than I cared to know about how this place is run, and what a labyrinthine task it can be to pull the strings.
The meritocracy is a real, wonderful thing. It's what we always wanted. Performance matters. If you are good at what you do, you are rewarded; and if you are not, you are pushed aside to make way for someone who can do your job. It's a utilitarianism that by rights should have arisen with the Gallente. That it did not, bubbling instead out of that black stew that is the Caldari corporate world, is testament to their ability to adapt, and a great discredit to ours.
And in this new world they allow us to create, I still cannot help but wonder if the legacy of Tibus Heth, that high warlord of the Caldari State, and his quest to destroy the Gallente Federation by any means, isn't still being furthered. For the numbers have come in, and they are the same ones as they were yesterday and the day before.
The colony operates better than ever. The people will brook nothing less, now. Anyone who fails to serve the meritocracy and its people at the level it demands can not be allowed to block the path of others.
The numbers have come in. I've known Jeb since we were kids.
This is how they will turn us against one another. And I don't know how to be a Gallentean any more.
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It may not make sense at first. The complexities of life's story run so deep that it may take some time to understand. Some time indeed. Yet I tell you now that time will make the truth of these words shine ever brighter, because that is what I made them to do.
- Unknown
***
She was watching the people of Seyllin die on live holovision when they came for her.
Lianda. I must warn you, my child, no matter the risk. The Senate has learned of the appearance of new, stable wormholes, leading to unknown areas of space. You must not involve yourself in this matter. There will be a time and a place for your research to continue. Please, for the sake of everything you have worked for, lie low.
They told her CreoDron had only asked for one person. On the display, a darkened and burning orb glowed in brilliant shades of blue. Millions must have been there, she thought, trapped inside a dying planet.
They said this was the kind of help that would matter more tomorrow, when today had taken what it would from them all. Strangely poetic, the ones they had decided to send for her. Most likely no coincidence. They left her there. She would follow soon, once her affairs had been set in order. Those words, and the truth of them in her eyes when she stepped towards them so purposefully,
They had bought the privacy she would need to reach him.
***
"CD-73, this is CD-Vitrauze, come in."
"CD-Vitrauze, this is CD-73, I have you."
"How are you doing out there?"
"Fine, just settling in."
"Professor? What you said before? We're behind you all the way."
A poignant smile formed across her face, shared only with the on-board surveillance.
"Thank you."
The Helios stabilized as it pulled out of warp, settling for now into a cautious eighty-kilometer orbit. The gamble had paid off. Not that she had doubted her initial findings. She felt it was somehow appropriate that Vitrauze was where she found it. She had not signaled anything to them, not yet, not until she could see something.
Something amazing.
The system of Vitrauze, to most people, had been nothing more than another cruel and lonely place off the major spacelanes of the Federation. For most people, it would remain such. That was fine with her. The best secrets had always lain in plain sight, beneath casual glances that each day saw nothing.
She saw them, though. Stripping the unknown of its mystery had been her life's work, a task as noble as it was destructive. Before her now, just a few short moments away, was one more riddle, but it wasn't one she would solve to the end. She gazed out into the twisting shapes, admiring something she felt she had seen a thousand times before in her dreams and yet only now truly saw for the first time. It was as magnificent and terrifying as anything she could have hoped for.
For those there now, Vitrauze would be remembered as the system where they found that first link to the unknown. For her, it would be where she left something. She would burn, glow like Seyllin, and in that dim luminescence that her sacrifice shed, others would see the hidden paths to tread. He would have liked it phrased that way.
"Vitrauze, I've found something. Sensors onlined, in transit now. You have live priority feed."
The microwarpdrive engaged and eighty kilometers quickly became fifty, thirty, twenty and then, nothing. Zero point.
It had been named after an early Federation Senator, whose name in turn was supposedly taken from one of the first settlers to come through the EVE Gate. To the Amarr, "Vitra" meant simply "life." Life itself. The Gallentean understanding of the word was more subtle, however. To them it meant "living."
Different in the way sunrise and sunset are, she thought.
Six more Helioses decloaked as they dropped out of warp, falling into the same cautious long-range orbit as she had.
"Whenever you're ready."
***
"CD-73, this is CD-Vitrauze, come in."
She stopped the thrusters for a moment, almost answering the call before deciding against it. They could wait. Even though her voice alone would mean so much, they could wait. For now, this moment was hers.
"CD-73, this is CD-Vitrauze, come in. Problem at our end."
The blood immediately started pushing through her veins, accelerating with each new heartbeat. She fought back the instinct, millions of years and even more souls forfeited in the name of progress, all driving her to avoid this. To return.
"CD-Vitrauze, this is CD-73, I have you."
"Black Eagles have entered system, maximum time until location is scanned: approximately 2 minutes."
"Proceed as planned. I am not here."
Within just a few moments of those words reaching the other side, the flagship of CreoDron's private fleet deactivated cloaking devices and began about the crucial task of pretending to be useful.
***
To most observers, "CD-1" would be considered a monstrosity. Horrifically warped Dominix hulls overflowing with esoteric electronics equipment often evoked familiar images, ones not so welcome in the heart of Federation space, particularly in recent years, and particularly when the vessel in question carried CreoDron tags.
To many of the leading scientists in CreoDron, though, it was their beloved "mothership." At times it would serve as their mobile research lab, as their home. Now it served as one incredibly risky decoy. Confiscation would mean an end to so many ongoing projects, but the weight of that also played in their favor.
The uncharacteristically dark hulls of four Megathron-class battleships suddenly appeared, sliding into the scene with a graceful menace that only the Black Eagles, with their specially commissioned ships, could project. Even before the violent tear in the fabric of space that dominated the area, gushing with its ominous crimson light, their presence was made known. The arrival alone would have its effect, but underneath it all, the official CreoDron line from that point on would remain steadfast. All contact with the other side had been lost.
Duvolle scientists had been "invited" to attend the ensuing investigation and it was they in particular who queried the absence of CreoDron's leading astrophysicist. No doubt their own interest in these matters was welcomed by the Eagles, just as Duvolle had welcomed the opportunity to see and hear things that would normally put their own operations under the Federation's ruthless self-scrutiny. These were the sorts of plays the Eagles were fast becoming known for, where saying no was made a twice-unattractive option.
The captain of the fleet understood better than most the capacities of his opponent. He would comply, but even though others made billions of ISK, these two outsiders now prying into their research would be considered by him and the rest of his crew as the very worst kind of vultures. This was how real, lasting damage was done. No press releases, no fanfare, no public comments one way or the other. Nothing would be made today but enemies.
As CD-1 was turned over indefinitely to Federal jurisdiction, the first discovery was made. In one ear, the pilots and crew of CreoDron were hearing stories of a new, unknown civilization and in the other, the mechanical drawl of a Federation police drone reading them their rights.
Normally, such a task was paid its respect, and even the most severe of the Eagle's captains would dutifully inform a fellow citizen of their legal rights. As both parties floated there, however – the once-honored formalities of the moment handled by automatons – the Eagles received their own distracting news. Another nineteen wormholes had been discovered, and although that amount by itself was easily matched, what disconcerted the captains most was that only five minutes before their arrival, the number had stood at one.
***
The Helios rested up against the structure. The enclave in the distance seemed quiet, bereft of life. This one, however, felt young even now. There was such beauty in this timeless design, even though time had claimed them all.
It was more real this time. He looked more real, but she could see it. See that he was not, and that perhaps, this was not either. The data could have been pulled from the fluid router cache, enhanced somehow. Any automated system that could do something like this would be far more advanced than she had known, but then this was not her field, and she had a saying about scientists who casually dipped into her own. All the same, she could swear she knew the design. So old. She had these thoughts even as she stared at him. Too much a scientist and too little a soldier.
This time, there was no life in Hilen's eyes, and it was telling her to go.
Once again into the darkness, and for a moment she could almost feel that wind on her face, as the data that represented who she was failed to cross the river back home.
***
"We have reports of…78 now. 78, Corporal. I just had a scout land in… in…"
"What is it, Captain?"
"…in Luminaire, Sir."
"What?"
"An advance scout, deployed… deployed in Lonetrek. They reported the wormhole in Ibura, scouted the other side and landed in the middle of our operations base."
***
Lianda watched the leaves falling into the stream, plucked from the limbs of the trees with such ease. The wind was so gentle she could barely feel it on her face and yet it took them all, softly caressing the branches into donating the remnants of life they once bore.
She could understand that eagerness, how easy it was to let go after you'd grown out of the things that once nurtured you, that once comprised your entire world.
He understood this, of course. This was his VR channel, and he had chosen the environment for a reason.
"Hilen," she said quietly, looking across to the Deteis. His eyes were fixed on the currents that licked at the edge of the bank. A sobering gaze slowly lifted to meet hers. The weight of everything they had shared was staring her in the face. She fell silent.
"Go," he said, turning away from her and shaking his head. "Just…"
He disconnected the feed, leaving her alone in the surrounding black.
***
"Her unique network ID was accessed at the same time she attempted to make contact, yet she did not enter her password correctly."
"Yes, we looked into it. She didn't gain any access to secure information. We're investigating the reasons she didn't authenticate properly."
"Of course, but that's not what I wanted to mention."
"Yes?"
"You don't seem to know what I'm talking about."
"Go on."
"The password, the one she entered. The incorrect string?"
"I will put aside any questions I have about how you would have access to such a thing and ask you to come to the point."
"It's a locus."
"I see."
"Yes."
"We were not aware."
"With due respect, Sir, what you are not aware of is that for every one of those six Helioses inside your system, there are two of our Buzzards."
"I believe that as much as I believe you're a psychologist."
***
Applied Science? All science is applied. Eventually.
- Hilen Tukoss. Program Director, Otosela Neuropsychology Center.
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I'll likely never know which one of us was the traitor; the old man I destroyed, or me.
We all pooled into the classroom. I couldn't help but wonder why there was such a rush to get in when the same people couldn't wait to get out.
M. Cromwell came in a little later. Most teachers hang out in the classroom between sessions, like it's their own little fortress of knowledge, but he takes every chance to leave the room. He's probably smoking, but that's not the point. He gets a kind of begrudging respect from his students for this, like he's one-upping our own tardiness and lack of interest, and if you look at it with the right mind-set it makes you feel like he's one of us, dragged into that late adulthood despite his fervent protestations. I think that's horseshit. He just doesn't like us, that's all.
We were supposed to go over the basics of ancient Caldari history, which was an irony and a half since we're at war with them in the present. I'd imagined that the school authorities would cut this class from the schedule once the war started, but apparently the Gallentean educational establishment prides itself on not bending to the whims of pressure groups. As an idea, it sounded akin to a building trying not to bend to the whims of the bomb in its basement, but there we had it.
Cromwell was cranky from the word go. He walked into the classroom, smelling too strongly of fresh mint, and put his oversized coffee mug on his desk. The room was practically antiquated – most historians seemed to like them that way – but Mr. Cromwell had made a valiant concession to modern times with that mug, one of those self-heating motion refilter units that keep its drink permanently fresh.
"Alright," he said to the room, all of us already seated, "move in, come on. We don't have all day in here, you know." He hovered his finger over the vidscreen inset in his table, and the lights in the room dimmed slightly, counterbalanced by the glare from our own monitors.
"Where had we got to?" he said to the empty air. "Ah. Yes. Now." He looked up from the screen and directly at us. The man had taught this stuff for longer than I'd been alive, and you could see him slipping into gear. "The Cathura rebellion was, let me see, started exactly two hundred years after the Raata empire was formed and ended two years later, which puts it at 17670 and 72 CE, and if you ask me what that was in Yoiul years I'm throwing you out the window. The peace treaty they eventually signed was at the hall of…"
He paused and threw a quick glance at his screen, presumably to check that he was telling the same truths as usual - whenever old teachers do this I imagine an old man walking up a flight of stairs, brushing the handrail to ground himself - but when he caught what the text was saying, he sputtered and ground to a halt.
"I don't believe this," he said.
Twenty odd pairs of ears perked up.
"They've changed it. Again. Oh, for the love of ... alright. Look here," he said to us, and there was rancor in his voice, as if we were to blame for whatever had annoyed him, "the Current History section may have opened their arses to propaganda, but the Ancient one doesn't usually merit the attention of the secret police. This, you will be interested to know, is because we've taught it for so long that it's become ingrained in the minds of people who are now working adults, and as it turns out, altering the facts that we're now teaching to their children aggravates them far more than the lies they're fed on the nightly news. I guess their history lessons form an important part of every man's childhood, for which you have my undying pity and commiseration.
"Be that as it may, I would like you to ignore the wording of the key phrases you see on your screens. The treaty of Cathura was peaceably signed, with everyone behaving as gentlemen so far as the circumstances allowed. Its terms were not 'barbarous' as the text would have you think, nor were there 'sweeping' losses for one side as a result. Some people died of starvation, but it wasn't because their leaders were broke or powerless. The other side had slashed-and-burned as it went. You'll find this to be a common tactic in warfare anywhere in New Eden."
He read on for a silent minute, with quiet mutterings of "good lord" and "are you serious?" Eventually he turned back to us and said, "This is called loaded language, and the reason it's called loaded is because someone is holding a gun, aimed right at the writer's head if I'm any judge."
He paused, gently running his fingers over the vidscreen like a parent touching its injured child. "They can't change history, but slight adjustments of tone are allowed," he added with acid bitterness. "But we'll work on that. Two minute break, so rest your fragile young minds. I'm going to upload additional study material from my own collection."
There was a muted collective groan and a whispered few "not more texts, come on," but he ignored it. So did I. I was getting increasingly angry at the man.
It was that motion; the way he'd absent-mindedly touched the screen. As with everything else he did it spoke of a private love between him and old history, not a public one a teacher should share with his students. There are some people whose antagonism is merely an expression of affection coupled with a kind of innate cynicism. You get the feeling they want the best for you in a world that's going all to hell, even if they think your idiocy is contributing to the problem. They care for you despite your glaring faults. This is the only true love that exists, you might say. In my anger I saw him like an empty husk, loveless and grey.
I'd raised my hand before I knew it.
He fixed me with a glare and said, "Yes." Not my name; just 'yes'.
"Should we be breaking away from the material?"
"Heaven help us if you escape the confines of your minds," he said. Some people in the class tittered.
"But the texts that are taught everywhere-"
"Look," he said. "The Caldari have ways that go back just as far as ours and are usually a damn sight more honorable. Having a shadow update to the history texts call them 'barbaric' is doing a disservice not only to their age-old culture but to our integrity in looking at the world. And by the way, my little mutton-heads, this goes for other empires as well. Some textbooks that you won't be seeing in my classroom claim the Amarr are nothing more than slave-driving zealots, old monsters gilding their fingers in the name of some wispy little ghost. In fact the Amarr are a deeply spiritual and misunderstood group of people who are trying to better the world in ways we Gallente completely fail to appreciate. The fact that they cock it up half the time and have the worst PR agency in history is beside the point. This, this, this," he said to me, emphasizing each word like a hammer, "is what you need to get into your head before we can let you out into the real world. Think for yourself. God help us if you can't even learn to do that."
I was fuming and said, "Which we do by having you teach your own private version of the past?"
He opened his mouth to respond, and I opened mine to outshout him, but a soft voice at the back of the hall cut through our words like a stone thrown through fog. It said, quite politely, "Why is this even an argument?" and it came from Sheeran Keil, one of the best students in the class, if not in the school. He was hard-working, soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, and illuminated in that halo of faint brilliance you see on the people you simply know are going to go far in life. He was a Jin-Mei, too.
M. Cromwell's gaze didn't waver. He merely turned his head, like a stone statue, until his eyes, staring straight ahead, found Sheeran.
With the unfaltering bravery of the dying, Sheeran pointed at his vidscreen and said, "This is what is being taught. This is what we are supposed to learn. This is what I am supposed to learn during the class. I would like to learn it, M. Cromwell."
"If you think, M. Keil, that the Caldari should be retroactively trampled, then that's your prerogative. Heaven save me from debating a civilization's merits with a scholar."
"I'll be happy to take on extra studies-"
"That's not the point, M. Keil," the teacher said, an evil grin on his face. "The point is that you are here to learn, for it is by learning history, and indeed as is so often said, learning from history's mistakes, that we stand any hope of avoiding them in these new and treacherous times. If we paint the Caldari with the blackest of brushes we reduce them to crude caricatures, unworthy of our sympathy or understanding. Believe me, in a war, that is not the attitude you want to have."
"M. Cromwell," Sheeran said with an audacity even I found amazing, "in a war, I would have thought that was exactly the right attitude to have."
"Look, you guys had your chance and blew it," the teacher said to him. "You may think the Caldari should go the same way and simply surrender to the unstoppable might of the Gallente Federation."
It was a vicious insult to Sheeran's ancestry, and he made to defend it, but Cromwell silenced him by saying, "Stop nattering about the ones who dared fight back. All in class, now, sit up! The books are long since updated, so we will continue with the lesson as I intend to teach it." He gave me a final glare, then launched back into the books.
What I should have said was this:
I had just about had my fill of him, of his bullying others and hiding behind history. No one else was teaching so belligerently, and how could you believe the message, enticing as it might be, if the messenger himself couldn't be trusted? He might have a problem with revisionists, but he was teaching his own version of history, the one he'd formed in his own mind after all those years, instead of following the common consensus. He was bullying the learning into us. Anyone who dared think otherwise apparently deserved nothing but scorn.
I said nothing, and the class ran till completion.
Afterwards, talking to my classmates, I found that some people liked this little guerilla line he'd taken - the same who usually liked his brazen attitude - but others hated it. And in a strange and rather unpleasant way, I felt like I should have belonged to his supporters, because it's always good to feel like you've sided not only with the truth but the stamped-down truth, allied with the rebels and the real heroes the world is trying to silence.
But what we had, when you looked at it with honesty, was one man's interpretation of the truth, and whatever bravery he was instilling in us by his defense of history was discounted by his acts in class, which were teaching us the value of tyranny.
I dithered, and realized that I really wanted him to fail, to say something that would remove him from my world.
When he passed us, I walked behind him and quietly said, "M. Cromwell."
He did not stop, but slowed enough for me to catch up. "What do you want?" he said.
"So who are the good guys?" I asked.
It was a dangerous question, and he knew it, and I wanted him so badly to give the wrong answer. Instead he said, "People are people, with good and bad sides. Good people can do terrible things; bad people can perform wonders."
He left, and I let him go.
An idea began to form in my head, but I wasn't sure whether I could go ahead with it. So I followed Cromwell to the teacher's lounge, in the hope that I could talk to him for a little longer and make up my mind, one way or another.
When I got there the door was ajar, so I waited outside and listened. Cromwell was talking to a fellow teacher about the recent class, and I heard him say, "I think of it as charity work, really."
"Oh?" the other man said.
"If I don't raise their IQs by a few points, they might eventually forget how to breathe."
Stones in the fog. Stamped-down stones in the fog.
I didn't think about it for another second. I walked away, skipped the rest of my classes and headed off-campus, towards downtown. I spoke to authorities in one of the new institutions Mentas Blaque had set up, where I told them the easily verifiable fact that my teacher had gone against curriculum that might be politically sensitive, and the unverifiable lie that when asked who the good guys were, he had answered 'Caldari' without missing a beat.
M. Cromwell did not come to class the next morning.
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The rheumatism wasn't so bad these days, thanks to some of those new medicines they'd brought in from the core worlds. Eyesight was alright thanks to the old implant, mind was sharp as ever, and if his hands trembled a little at times, well, it was fall and the weather was cold.
He walked slowly down the streets of this city in space. The autumn leaves drifted in whorls around him, raked by cold gusts of wind. It always amazed him to see trees planted here, in a disconnected place where he could look out the window and see nothing but the stars of the sky; but then, they belonged no less here in this small globe of orbit than on any other globe in the galaxy. Old and withered, and losing their decoration with the encroaching winter. He was glad to have them here with him, old and withered too.
The winter, now, he didn't much look forward to. The weather engine did what it could, but proper snowstorms were out of the question. At most they would get a sloppy cold drizzle and some bitter frosts. Winter leeched all color out of the year.
It felt like they'd started to fade already. He ignored the little twinges from his aging joints and moved on to his daily place of refuge. In his youth, his own grandfather had told him about those pains: that they were little pecks from the black birds of the river, eating him up 'til there was nothing left but the souls, and that while he still felt their beaks piercing his flesh, it was proof he was still alive.
He smiled. The story had given him nightmares for days, about black birds of prey.
It was still early morning when he reached the cafe. He went here every day, part for breakfast and part to gently immerse himself in the rushing flow of life. One did not truly start dying, he felt, until one was left alone.
He took his usual seat in his usual booth, which was never occupied at this early hour, and glanced at the newsreader inset in the tabletop. It was possible to set the reader to broadcast upwards, casting a vertical holo that was akin to reading a real paper and didn't force you to keep your plate to one side, but he preferred it this way, burrowing over the news in his own little corner of the world.
The headlines were their usual grim and paranoid selves, so he switched over to articles about more local business. He'd always had an inquisitive mind, if a little overly lent to imagination, and had known even as a young man that the loudest news held the biggest lies. One needed to watch for the little signs instead: the leaves, and which way they were blowing.
The waitress, whose name was Joraa but whom he always called Madame, came up to him. She was in her middle age, but had the mind of a sassy youngster. He liked that, even more so because it likely bugged the hell out of everyone younger than her.
"Hey, old man," she said in a voice with an evenly balanced rasp and whine.
"Good morning, Madame," he said. "The same, please."
She gave him a smile, which was always nice, and headed off to get his breakfast.
He went back to the news and editorials. Breakfast wouldn't take long to arrive - they knew his usual schedule - but he would take his time in eating it, savoring the bites while he spent the long hours at the table. Only when he had read through everything in the day's edition, including the big screaming news, would he consider the day's meal to be done.
A plate of food appeared before him, and a cup of coffee joined it. He looked up to thank Joraa, saw her face and gasped.
For a brief, heart-stopping second he thought she was an angel. Her face was bathed in a gentle halo, like she was returning from a swim in the rays of the sun. It extended to her hair, which shimmered like radiant gossamers, and to the skin of her neck, whose gentle sway left a momentary streak of light in the air.
She stared back, first in alarm, then in bemusement. When she smiled, the parting of her lips revealed teeth that seemed overlaid with soft, warm diamonds.
"Are you alright, dear?" she said.
He nodded unblinkingly. "You look like a star," he said in wonderment.
"You need another cup of coffee, is what you need," she said, shaking her head to dislodge the compliment. She turned and walked away, and he could've sworn that the varicose veins in her calves glowed through her skin.
***
"There is nothing wrong with you," the voice said.
"Apart from the usual, you mean."
"Yes," the voice said. It came from a screen in his room at the medical quarters. On that screen was a nice, nonoffensive face that showed a calculated expression of aloof concern. It was no more real than the screen that projected it.
"So those halos I see around people, the ones that are everywhere now, those are just old man's talk?"
The A.I. did not blink on the monitor. "They are not measurable on any graph we have. Which is good news, because it rules out any number of dementias you might have been suffering from."
"Well, that's nice," he said. "So what is it?"
The A.I. was silent for a calculated moment. "I don't know," it said. "Most likely guess is that your implant is starting to malfunction, but the checks we ran on that back in the booth showed nothing out of the ordinary. I'm afraid I can not in good conscience underwrite an operation unless we know what it is we'd be fixing, nor can I approve a replacement. You can still see perfectly, I assume?"
"Yes. That, I can." The implant was old and had cost him a lot of money, but it had served its job for many years. As had he.
"Does the anomaly cause you significant discomfort?"
"Not really, truth be told. I don't mind a little extra glow in my life."
"Well, then," the A.I. said, flashing a brief smile. "That's nice."
***
More and more, the people he passed were enveloped in halos. Oddly enough, even though the altered visuals gave them more color and filling in life, he could swear it was also making them more transparent. Someone passed him by, and he saw not merely the person but the ground, walls and sky behind their glowing corpus.
He suspected the implant, which had saved his sight for all these years, was incorrectly refracting the light it received from certain objects. It was a complex piece of machinery, installed for a complex and unpleasant visual disorder he had greatly suffered from, and had a mind of its own. Chances were it was having some minor defect in displaying people in motion, or clothing, or skin, and compensating for it by showing instead the cached backgrounds it knew were there. It had to be something like that, because otherwise he was going quite mad, and he did not intend to head down that colorful route just yet.
He tried not to think about it too much. He'd long since grown used to people fading into the background, eventually to fade away altogether.
One morning later that week he was walking to the cafe when he noticed one man on the other side of the street, standing very still. When he glanced at the man, he found his stare returned.
"Hi there," the man said, and his voice carried across the street.
"Roten! As I live and breathe," he replied. "How are you, son?"
The man walked up and embraced him. They'd worked together on the station a long while ago, Roten under his mentorship in various electronic and mid-level tech work, but Roten had left on a freighter for parts unknown. They hadn't seen each other in years.
It disturbed him how strange Roten appeared. He wasn't any different from all the people who passed by in the rush of the day, grey visages now, but the old man never paid much attention to anyone. Roten, though, he wanted to see. He wanted to see that smiling pink face all covered in grime from a hydrogen battery repair gone explosively wrong; not this chromatic, polarized mask that seemed more at home on a robot. His translucent body was so full of refracted color and hue that the old man fancied he could see himself reflected, his wrinkled countenance trapped inside Roten's own corporeal form.
Roten walked with him to the cafe, chatting amiably, but it was clear that he wasn't staying long. He did not let on much about the reason he had arrived or his destination, but promised that this was not the last time the two would meet. "I'll be around," he said. "Just look for me."
"This damn implant keeps going the way it does, I won't be seeing you at all."
"I'm sure it'll be fine, one way or the other," Roten said. He shook the old man's hand and walked away, fading into the flurry of deepening autumn.
It was a pleasant coincidence, the old man thought, and gave him a warmth that lasted him through the long day.
The next morning, on the same early walk, that feeling turned to ice.
He saw an old man; not old in body as he himself might be, but a truly old one of spirit and soul. People spoke of age and the dumber ones said that age was merely a feeling - which, if it was, meant it was a feeling of dulled senses and sharp aches, and good luck to anyone trying keeping up a sprightly pretense - but there was a glimmer of truth in that cheerful idiocy. Some people were merely aged, and some were truly old.
This old man was named Fermar, and he was dead. He had to be. Never had a man been so close to the grave for so long of his natural life.
Fermar saw him, walked up and said hi.
"What on earth are you doing here?" the man answered.
Fermar gave a wry grin. "Hey there, boy."
"Last I knew you were working on a colony in deep space, near the Sansha. You crazy old coot. I thought you were long gone."
Fermar shrugged. "It worked out, in its fashion."
"Well, not to be inhospitable, but what are you doing here? Did you take a position somewhere else?"
"Who says I didn't just retire?" Fermar said to him.
"This one," he replied, pointing a wrinkled finger at his own old chest. "You're one of those people, Fermar, who keeps going right until the end. I can see right through you."
And he could. His friend's body was so transparent that it barely cast a shadow. Its outlines did not so much glow as faintly shimmer, like oil floating on water, and whatever colors remained in his face were multihued and iridescent. The old man made a mental note to revisit the A.I. doctor. He shouldn't have to suffer his friends to be invisible.
"Yeah, I guess I'll keep on forever," Fermar said. "But I'm glad to see you, boy." He seemed about to add something, then merely said, "Stay in touch," waved and walked off.
The old man, shaken, continued on to the café. He opened the door with hands that trembled a bit too much, and it wasn't until he felt the firm fabric of his old booth that he found any kind of calm. The seat was there, in all the ways that a simple seat could be.
He sat there staring into empty space, murmuring his thoughts. Roten's appearance had been a godsgift, and a believable one at that, but Fermar's felt more like a warning.
All those years ago, when they parted, he had been certain he'd never see Fermar again. The man had lived through a Sansha invasion on his colony, had a hand in a rebellion that had saved many but cost him his daughter and eventually torn apart his marriage. He had drifted from job to job before eventually settling as a supervisor on another mining colony precariously close to Sansha space. Whatever had been in Fermar's mind at that time - revenge, exhaustion, madness or whatever else - he had not laid down these last bricks in the road of his life to lead anywhere but into the open arms of death.
The specter of Madame Joraa came along. "You really do talk to yourself a lot, don't you, hon?" she said.
He smiled at her. "Glad to see you're still here."
"Of course I am. Who else is going to take care of your needs?" she said, winked at him and walked off.
He grinned at this and looked down at the vidscreen in the table. When he looked up again, his heart stopped.
Across from him, sitting quite calmly in the opposing seat, was another ghostly person. He could see right through her, to the booth with its metal rails and synthetic, faux-leather that never seemed to fade with age.
He said, in a brittle voice, "Oh dear."
She leaned her head to one side and said, "Is that any way to treat an old friend?"
He leaned back in his seat, rubbed his eyes and sighed deeply. "I'm so sorry," he said, eyes still shut. "Hello, Charlize. You're looking very well. Are you dead?"
She caught her breath, then started to laugh, that gentle scale of sonorous notes he had once thought would be the soundtrack to his life. "We certainly are morbid! How are you doing? I've missed you."
"Likewise, Charlize," he said. "I thought you were gone for good."
"I was," she said, and he opened his eyes at last. She was smiling with infinite sadness.
"Hang on, I'll order you a coffee at the very least," he said and raised his hands, calling for Madame. She was cleaning a table a few booths down, but no matter how much he hailed, she didn't respond.
He turned back to Charlize, flustered and a little alarmed. "Why can't I get her attention?"
"I'll tell you in a second, dear," the old woman said, taking his hand in hers. "Let's just keep talking for now. I have a lot to tell you."
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4.
The noise was getting louder, and the air was running out.
"What the hell was that thing?" Now that there was nowhere to go, Karin couldn't stop herself from pacing.
It had torn through her ship's hull like it was tinfoil, exploding out into the vacuum. She'd seen it on the camera feed, bursting through the reinforced bulkheads of the central hold, and finally understood why Dagan had wanted a camera trained on a goddamn inert drone.
God, he was probably dead, too.
Of course, he could come back. The rest of them weren't that lucky.
"You're so damn calm all of a sudden. You're gonna die, too, you know." Neral was quiet, leaning against the wall where Karin had arranged her. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was shallow, her face sheet-pale.
"It seems quite likely, yes."
"Fucking Dagan," Karin muttered. "I'm so sick of eggers."
"You'll be free of them soon enough, hmm?"
"The hell is wrong with you?"
"I've done what I had to do. There's nothing left."
The clang of metal on metal reverberated through the ship, over and over. Something was beating against the wall of their little harbor, and knowing what it was wasn't making her any more comfortable.
It was getting louder. She'd swear it was almost through the bulkhead.
"You need to know--" Neral gasped. "You need to know that they'll be coming for you now. They'll all be coming for you."
"Who? Who--" Karin's words cut off, eyes widening as she saw Neral's gun. "Are you crazy? You can't shoot that in here!"
"Can." And the report filled the room.
Karin slowly, cautiously opened her eyes. She looked over at where Neral had been sitting, then quickly looked away. She turned her face away from the ruin that had been Neral, and faced instead her own destruction.
It was almost through the door. It was--
"Hello! Anyone alive in there?"
CONCORD?
Had she known?
3.
Karin dragged Neral along the hallway, her progress painfully slow. She'd found the woman with a chunk of shrapnel in her gut, and Karin couldn't just leave her lying there. Her ship was collapsing around her, nothing she could do about it, but she'd be damned if she was going to let her ethics go the same way.
And now she was trapped in the twisted wreck of her ship with a dying woman.
A dying woman and that noise.
The terrifying shriek of tortured metal and the groaning vibrations of the hull as it collapsed were bad enough, but it was the steady, metallic banging against the thinnest bulkhead of her accidental prison that was really freaking her out.
She really wanted to be thinking about something else.
Her mind caught on a story from her childhood, of monsters in the depths of her homeworld's seas—
No, that wasn't any better.
-- arms reaching out to strangle whole vessels, down under the weight of fathoms of water, death as certain as--
"Tahaki Karin," she thought, "you snap out of it this instant."
She contemplated the bristling heap of metal shards ahead, bent and broken support beams and plates barricading what should have been a hallway.
She set Neral down gently, tried to slow her breathing. Normal. Do a mental inventory: What do you have on you?
Wrench, hammer, screwdriver, pliers--
Leverage.
She could get some of the debris off one of the interior walls, find a way around, get them to a pod--
--live through this.
2.
When everyone’s eyes were glued to the security feed, watching Dagan’s precious drone burst free from the ribs of their ship, it was Communications Officer Neral’s voice they heard over the com.
She sounded just as calm telling them to abandon ship as she always had announcing an incoming transmission.
It made it all the more surreal when Karin discovered Neral bleeding out in the ship’s corridor.
She’d suffered a massive stomach wound, and judging by the trail she’d left she’d barely been able to pull herself over to the wall.
Karin crouched by Neral’s shoulder, reaching out to check her pulse, and nearly fell over when a sticky hand grabbed her arm.
Neral’s eyes opened, bright with fever. "Dagan… drone. Got to warn. My sisters. How?"
"Hey," Karin said. "Hey, it’s okay, we’ll get you out of this."
"Wasn’t supposed to. Never expected. To get out." Neral laughed, short and horrifying, a thick wetness in her voice. " Will now."
Neral grabbed desperately at Karin’s arms. "They’ll be coming after you now. They’ll all be coming for you. Tell my sister—"
"You can tell her yourself," Karin said. "I’m going to lift you now, but it’ll hurt. Brace yourself."
1.
Dagan was on the line with her when the sirens started going off.
"Damn it," he said. "This is far too soon. I thought that thing was thoroughly offline."
"The drone? It was! I checked it over when you brought it onboard."
He switched her view to the security feed. It was powering up weapons.
"I'm getting out of here. You'll probably want to evacuate, too," Dagan said, as her door slid shut and she heard the locks engage. "Shame you won't make it."
Arrogant bastard, she thought, and headed for the ventilation ducts.
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When I regained consciousness we were deep underground. They had me trussed up and tied to a pole, and were carrying me like a massive cocoon. I was completely naked. The friction from the ropes was burning my skin.
My arms and legs were pinned but I could move my head. The walls on either side were lit with torches that flickered as we descended. There was a caravan of locals in front and back, and I imagined they were escorting me to the temple.
None of my team-mates were being carried with me. I was the last.
***
We were sitting in the lounge of a corporate employer that did not admit we existed. This was normal for people like us. We would be inspected by the corporation's agents, have our backgrounds investigated and our motivations questioned. Once we had finished this cute little white-collar gauntlet, they'd give us the information needed to do whatever it was they wanted. If we failed, we'd be left to fend for ourselves.
The meeting could just as well have been held in a back room somewhere, but instead we were brought in - after hours, mind - and sat in a large room with a nice view and far too many vidscreens on the walls. In the middle of the room was a large wire sculpture that looked like a spaceship's migraine. I imagined they'd brought us here to impress us, maybe get a little solidarity feel going. Funny people, these.
To their credit, they didn't waste any time. They got in a team that vetted us, asking questions that would have gotten them a bullet to the face under any other circumstances. They finished up, left the room, and a single agent entered in their stead. He was a tall, thin man in clothing that fit him well, and as soon as he was in the room he dimmed the lights and laid out images on the vidscreens.
Our employer, he said, was a Minmatar corporation that had interests in low-sec space. Now that the war was on, certain restrictions had been relaxed, and the right people stood to make quite a lot of money.
He pointed to one image. It showed a greenish-brown planet with the Amarr logo superimposed on its surface.
"We've been doing surveys on that one. Turns out certain areas have a high concentration of a valuable ore required for high-tech manufacturing. One valley in particular is so rich that its excavation alone could put a company into space."
"I've been to space," Chalmers said.
"How was it?" I said.
"Too crowded."
I grinned. The agent cleared his throat and continued, "So we'd very much like to gain control of that area. There's just one problem."
"The people," I said.
He nodded. "A society of Amarrians. Absolutely backward people, even by their own standards. Nobody's even looked at this planet for eons, let alone helped them out of the stone age. We don't have much information on them, but overhead imagery-", he waved a hand and the planetary image zoomed in, becoming a bird's-eye view of a land mass, "shows they've settled in that exact spot. You see these stone buildings here, here and here; that's all they have. Most of them serve some religious function, although the imagery lacks the detail for us to determine anything more."
"Does it matter?" I asked. "We're hardly going in with smiles and Scriptures."
"You cannot kill them," the agent said in a serious tone. "My employer is adamant that there be no unnecessary deaths, lest the media and public opinion in New Eden turn against us when we ramp up production. A lot of light will be cast on our operations there and it will not do for any local to say he lost his family due to our greed. So yes, it does matter."
"If we can't kill them," Chalmers said, "how the hell are we going to get them off the land? Throw the Scriptures over their heads and hope they run and fetch?"
"Almost," the agent said, and his face twitched into a leathery smile. "You're going to blow up their churches."
***
Logic was, we'd install explosives at key locations and make the locals - who we must've assumed were pretty stupid; more fools, us - think than an earthquake, or God's own hand, wanted them to pull up stakes and leave. Nobody was to be harmed; it would be fallen churches in the night, and the locals waking up to the ruins of their faith. Then, once the corp could set down roots, get something going there and worm their way into the local economy, such as it was, they could deal with the populations on the other, less metal-rich continents. Smiles and Scriptures, smiles and Scriptures, and a few coins for the commoners in exchange for some patches of land.
The first dose of unpleasantness came on our way to the dropship. We were to be shunted in pretty far away from ground zero and would have to travel several days to reach the area. The agent contacted us with an update on the soil we'd be traversing.
"It's poisonous," he said, and quickly followed it up with, "Not fatally, not unless you intend to eat the earth. But the minerals we're after aren't the kind of things you want in your bloodstream. It may be that the inhabitants will be a little ... odd. Not that it's a problem for you guys," that leathery smile again, "and if anything it'll be to your benefit. Tired, worn, exhausted people won't be listening to bumps in the night. Get in, plant the packages, get out again and you'll be fine."
The second surprise came after we'd landed and done a whole day's trek towards the site. We'd been told there was no other tribe living in the area, which appeared to be true. But we'd also been told that there were no settlements outside the valley where they lived - even though the land everywhere else was just as rich in bounty and raw materials - but we saw small ruins on the way, signs of past inhabitation. Some of those ruins had a decidedly religious slant, what little there was left of them. We spent the night in one, glad to have a roof over our heads, but the imagery they'd carved into the rock gave me a headache, and I was glad to be out of that damned place by morning.
The last surprise before everything went wrong was a quick communication from the agent. We'd been told there would be total communications blackout once we landed - not that we needed to worry about the locals, but there might be things in space listening out for our passage - and so the message was short, terse and not all that comforting. "New data. Bad place. Tribe long-term poisoned from minerals. Every fourth child dies in its crib. Iconic analysis shows Sani Sabik influence. Get in and get out."
And we, in all our civilized glory, reacted to our taut nerves with the dumbest emotion possible: Bravado.
We started acting as if we belonged. We were still a day's journey away from the valley and our high-tech, all this wonderful high-tech, showed no movement nor heat signatures moving about, so we barged through the bushes and stalked down the paths. It didn't occur to us they might have smelled us coming, and prepared for our arrival.
When the trap closed, all I saw was air. We were hoisted to a great height in a split second, and as we screamed and grabbed for our weapons we were dropped to the ground. I landed so hard on my shoulder that I felt its bone grind into my neck, and from somewhere close I heard a sickening crunch. We all lay there in one pile, writhing about and disoriented, surrounded by the woven threads of the net that had caught us. I didn't feel broken, so I called out to the others, but before they could respond I realized the crunching sound had come from a number of broken containers around us - they looked like thin bags of dried tree-bark - and that the air was now rife with the smell of iron. Everything went fuzzy, and then everything went black.
***
I came to in a sermon. There was no other way to describe it.
We were in a large hall filled with people, most of them sitting crosslegged on the floor. The crowd was bisected in the middle, leaving one direct path from the far end of the room directly to where we sat. In the distance I could see a door that I suspected led to the exit, though it was located in the corner of the wall and not the center as is usually the case. We were at the other end and there was another opening in the corner of the wall close to us, though it was only covered by a velvet curtain. I noticed that even though the hall was so packed that people's legs were touching, the area around this door was empty. It was a bad door, apparently.
I felt a little giddy and I knew I was going to die.
Almost everyone in the room faced us. We sat, too, crosslegged, but our legs were tied together at the ankles and our arms were tied to stakes set in the floor behind our backs. I could turn around enough to see the top of the stake - it was wooden, not sharp, but looked splintery.
Also, we had been stripped down to our underwear.
Chalmers looked at me from the far end of the row and I recognized his unspoken sentiment from his expression. This was wrong, this was very wrong, and if we didn't take in every little insignificant detail, focus on it and let it expand till it filled our heads, we would panic and we would die.
Beside us stood an Amarrian priest of an Amarrian religion that had nothing to do with the Amarr. I recognized some of the symbols on his robe from the ones I'd seen at the ruins a few days earlier. He held a cup and a ladle. Beside him was a large golden vat decorated with precious stones.
One by one, the people in the hall - whose clothes were dirty and tattered, and whose bodies were dirty and tattered - came to him, in the slouching sort of amble that conveys a feared respect. They bent forward so that their faces looked at the ground, and raised their beckoning hands over their heads in supplication. We were close enough that I got a good look at their skin, and I saw that it was lined with blackened veins, far darker than any man's should be. Their hands were a spider's web of darkness. The poison at work.
The priest's hands, I noticed, were unmarked and looked perfectly healthy. He ladled something out of the vat and into the cup, which I now recognized as a chalice, and handed it to the acolyte, who drank from it deeply.
It was not wine. I wished to the gods it had been wine, but it was not wine.
The tribe marched on, each member lurching to the altar to take sacrament. Their blackened hands reached for the chalice. Some brought their infants and held them up with steady hands as the priest gently poured into their mouths.
And then it was our turn. The priest filled the chalice and walked over to us. The room was still half full and I could feel every man's gaze burning holes into my chest.
He came to me first and held the chalice to me. I turned my head, in refusal but also so I didn't have to look at what was in it. A metallic smell crawled into my nostrils.
He stood there for a few endless breaths, then finally moved on to another team-member. We all refused, shaking our heads.
Chalmers was last. When the priest offered him the cup he merely shook his head, eyes closed. I could see a vein throbbing on his forehead. I thought everything was going to work out, but the moment the priest turned his back Chalmers made a croaking sound, inhaled sharply, and spat on him.
I expected an uproar, that the crowd would rise to their feet and storm us, but nobody moved. The priest merely turned back and gave Chalmers a gentle smile. This infuriated him even further and he started thrashing about, trying to rip up the stake he was tied to. I hissed at him to chill out but he ignored me, tossing his weight back and forth and straining uselessly at the bonds.
There was no panic. Several healthy-looking men came in from the wings - their hands completely free of black spiderwebs - and picked up Chalmers, hefting his struggling form as easily as that of a petulant child. They carried him cursing and yelling to the near exit, beyond the velvet curtain.
That was nearly the last we saw of him. We heard his screams for a few minutes more, growing hoarse and pained, but saw nothing, until. Until.
Until there was a roaring metallic sound, as of a machine coming alive, and for the briefest of moments there was a bright flash, so bright it shone through the curtain and showed us the silhouette of Chalmers, hanging spreadeagled and hooked up to countless tubes that writhed their way around his body as they drained him of his life.
The light stayed off but the sound went on until he died.
***
They left us there after the ceremony and eventually I passed out. When I came to I was in some other building with no light and no people and no team-mates around. I drifted in and out of consciousness. Once I awoke screaming someone's name.
Every now and then the priest would come in and speak to me, though whether it was really him or some mad delusion, I didn't know. I cried, sometimes.
And finally I awoke being carried by the people, into the ground, trussed up like an animal for the slaughter.
***
We intended to destroy their saviors - we, their enemies - but they are a forgiving people, simple but kind.
They found a way to live. Old rituals held anew. These blood colonies of a dark and grinning god.
My companions had been given a choice. I was the last. They were bringing me now to the holiest of temples, far underground in this place. I turned my head and looked at my hands and legs. My body was tired and weak, and in the flickering light of the torches I imagined I could already see my veins turning black.
We arrived, and it was a vast and dark place, a cave big enough for a battleship. We stood on a tall cliff where below I glimpsed a valley, surrounded by other craggy outcrops in the rocks. There were hundreds of light sources down there. At first I thought they might be torches, then realized they were bonfires. I could not imagine how many people were here.
In the distance was a building so tall it reached up to the cloudy roof of the cave. It was the shape of a capsule, bronzed and red, covered in gross metallic cables that looked like the veins and matted hair on a newborn's head. Their holiest of temples.
The mission was lost and so were we. There would be no rescue from this place. My companions had accepted that, in each their own way, and made their choices accordingly. Now it would be my turn.
They are taking me to the temple, to the great altar, where I will choose between the slow death of poisoning or a long life among these people. I will be a martyr or I will be an acolyte.
And I know already, with the knowledge of the dreaming, that at this vermillion altar the high priest will greet me, and he will give me the chalice filled with the drink of life; the purified cure of this land; the blood of Chalmers.
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Lauder was going to die.
A long time ago he'd bought, modified heavily, and inserted an ocular implant that allowed him to function as a module designer despite a crushing depression. It sent him into a conceptualization of his own subconscious, where he could access memory patterns and, increasingly, take refuge. It had worked fine, until one day when it didn't. Everything functioned fine except for the subconscious gateway, which was closed off no matter what Lauder tried.
Medicine had never worked; he felt it dulled his senses. Therapy was out; it had bored him and he'd always given up. The implant had been an engineer's solution, and had served him for a long time, leaving him without need to develop any other coping mechanisms. When it broke, the illness came in with a vengeance, and he saw absolutely no way out while it wrapped him in its black arms.
And at some point - after he'd lost his job, his will to live and most of his basic dignity, living in his filth-ridden quarters on the space station he inhabited - he had a fever dream, wherein he realized that he was going to die and it couldn't be here. It would be giving truth to the path he'd always feared he was on, and would make lie of all those times where he'd told himself that he would be fine if only he went on just one more day. It'd be the last betrayal to himself, and it couldn't happen. He wanted to see something else, and be somewhere else, and feel that he was dying as someone else.
It had to be a place that would fill him up, but not force him to be happy, because happiness would feel fake in his current mindset. A remote location, somewhere he'd never be found, but also somewhere beautiful and static, where he could rest his gaze on the surroundings without participating, giving of himself, or showing appreciation. Somewhere not created by man.
He remembered surveys done on asteroid colonies, back in the days when he'd been working on module upgrades. One in particular had been renowned for its massive caves and even offered expensive zero-gravity spelunking tours, but had reportedly fallen into disuse in recent times: it was out of the way for regular traffic, and the colony on the other part of the asteroid was an unattractive place.
It was perfect.
***
The tours were still available, and although the suits were strapped into a set route with fiber wire, Lauder had brought some tools with him. He disabled his suit's remote positioning and callback systems, and in one of the food compartments he inserted a concoction that would make him drift off to a peaceful and final sleep.
After taking care of the suit he had a talk with the tour guide, supplemented with a nice, two-part cash bribe. The guard, who was under the impression that Lauder was a rich thrill seeker, promised to let Lauder in there unmonitored and not worry about him finding his way back out in time, though he said he'd stay on shift for the remainder of the day in case Lauder needed any help. He added that there'd been other people who had wanted a bit of extra excitement when spelunking, but most had turned back the moment they went off the beaten path.
"Why's that?" Lauder asked.
"Some parts of these caves are unstable, and when you cross over to weightlessness and dead space, it can affect you."
"Some misguided need for self-preservation," Lauder said, adding, "Seeing as how they were strapped in, monitored and perfectly safe."
"I suppose so," the guard said. "And sometimes the fear."
"Of what?"
"Whatever they'd find in there." The guard added that the cave inspectors, the ones who'd gone deepest into this complex of caverns, had usually not returned for a second trip, and that some said there was a natural maze in there.
Lauder thanked him for the warning, strapped in, and set off towards the unknown. The starting area, called the Meadows, was pitch black. His suit had an illumination device that would let him see some distance ahead, but he didn't touch it and instead activated the night vision component of his optical implant.
The world lit up. Lauder detached himself from the cable hooks that dotted the walls, and was soon free-floating in the cave, moving in deeper with the force of the tiny thrusters inset in his suit. It was a massive place, and it took Lauder several minutes of movement before he started seeing a hint of the opposite wall. To his surprise he noticed a few clusters of crystals dotting the black rock; he'd assumed the area had been thoroughly mined out before allowing casual tourists. Most of the crystals were greenish of color, with central spines that protruded far into space and smaller crystal fragments that stuck out at right angles from them.
It seemed to him that one cluster of crystals was arranged in a fairly circular fashion around a rock that looked darker than its surroundings. As Lauder moved closer he saw it was an opening, leading to another section of the cave. He sped up, aimed towards it, and nearly knocked himself out when he crashed into the wall at full speed.
***
Once he'd shaken off the blow, he reached out and started feeling the rock, wondering why he'd seen an opening there at all. With his depression set aside for a precious few moments, he inspected the wall, not only in his immediate surroundings but everywhere he could see. He thought he glimpsed a couple of other entrances, but they were gone when he blinked, and he wondered if his implant was conking out. He hoped it wasn't starting to transfer his mental constructs over to the real world; merely willing a tunnel into the wall shouldn't make his mind show him one.
He let himself drift around, hovering over the crystals and looking for something else. Ever since he'd entered the Meadows he'd felt sure that he was on the right track, for whatever reason, and he refused to believe that he was supposed to end his journey and his life in the entryway. He eventually came to a blanket of crystals that seemed to cover impenetrable rock. He stared at them, and for a split second the world shifted, as if losing transmission, and showed a gaping hole behind the crystals.
Lauder had no idea what was happening to his vision, but the thought of floating aimlessly here and staring at the crystals forever was too much to bear. He pushed himself away until he had a good starting distance, then used the suit's thrusters to reverse and speed him up, aiming for the wall. He'd picked up a fair amount of speed when he came close, and in the last second he pirouetted, hit the crystals feet first, and stomped on them as hard as he could. He'd assumed he'd be pushed away, but instead he plunged through, crystals shattering in zero-g all around him, and fell into a large, dark entryway to another cave.
This one was less of a proper cavern than a long, vast alleyway, its surfaces beset with sharp, red crystals and with stalactites and stalagmites formed when this asteroid had been part of a planet's gravity. Lauder moved carefully through it, and idly thought that this dark corridor, with its edges and spikes and redness, was a fair representation of how he'd felt when the depression came flooding in. Also, his feet hurt.
The corridor, which was wide enough to room a frigate, went on for a long while, turning occasionally in some direction but never coming to an end. Lauder had begun to wonder if he was judged to wander it forever, never leaving the flow, when he spotted an opening in the wall to his right and headed through it.
He came into a cavern as big as the Meadows, full of massive boulders of worthless ore. Lauder felt very tired. He'd heard such stories about this place, and had felt inexorably drawn to it, and now all he had was a blackened hole no better for dying than his quarters. He looked around and gasped when he saw that the entrance he'd come through had crumbled soundlessly, leaving him with no option but to push on.
He hovered over to one of the smaller boulders, which was the size of several men, with no aim other than perhaps to kick at it, but when he got closer, something didn't feel quite right. He turned on the light source of his suit and pointed it at the rock, and when he saw the red glint, he realized what he was seeing. Among the regular Omber and Pyrox he was seeing veins of Arkonor, one of the most precious ores in the world.
He moved back and marveled at what he was seeing. There was enough Arkonor in this single boulder to make a planetbound man rich beyond his dreams. Lauder had worked enough with capsuleers to be set for life, so he let himself fantasize about someone else finding this cave, processing some of the ore, selling it and, somehow, finding happiness through the riches. It amazed him that in this nondescript cave, where he'd felt nothing but sorrow and lamentations, there could be something to change a person's life.
After deliberating whether to inspect the other boulders, some of which were so tall that he could barely see where they ended, he decided not to, and instead floated gently among them, seeking another exit on this cave. There must be more than this, he thought.
There was. He found a red-rimmed tunnel that led him back to the original vast hallway, with the red crystals on all sides, but it felt like a part he hadn't seen before. It was like he had traveled through the tributary of a river, and now he flew on, letting it carry him where it may.
A flicker caught his attention, and he moved into another side tunnel. It led him to another cave, as big as the others, that looked as if he were back in winter times on a frozen planet. Everything was covered with ice, massive clear icicles that protruded from every surface like glass blades waiting for a giant's throat. Lauder noticed how some of them were remarkably similar to buildings; they were the same massive sizes as the boulders in the last room, but the structures here had tighter angles and clearer borders. Lauder marveled at it, but felt underwhelmed nonetheless. He'd been hoping for something more than ore and ice, but didn't know what, and felt an undercurrent of anger at himself for thinking so. Of course he'd find these things in asteroids, and little else.
He was about to move on through when he remembered the flicker. He looked around, and saw something in the distance, but it was so refracted by the ice that he couldn't quite tell what it was. He moved closer, navigating among the frozen blades, until he rounded one of them and nearly had a heart attack as a massive ball of fire came towards him. He scrambled and jerked in mid-space, but the fire was extinguished before it reached his body. After catching his breath, Lauder realized that it had traveled alongside a gigantic spear of ice nearby, and had jumped off for a second before losing whatever fuel it had. He wondered if the fire was feeding off oxygen trapped in the ice, and whether the frozen liquid really was water, but nearby flickerings interrupted his train of thought. There was more fire here, writhing and burning, and it undulated over the ice like living danger.
Without thinking, Lauder launched himself towards the fires, trying to catch them as they leapt off their surfaces. It was dangerous and stupid, he knew, and he kept going right until the point where he misjudged a leap and crashed back first into a large, jagged icicle, nearly impaling himself in the process. He managed to roll with the hit, but he heard, or felt, the vibrations on his body that felt half like his bones rubbing together and half like the suit being torn to pieces. The idea of losing everything to a stupid accident shocked him back to carefulness. He decided to leave the fire behind, and looked for an exit, still ignoring the fact that crystalline structures looked more and more like buildings every time he looked at them.
It didn't take him too long to find his way back to the main hall, red and endless, though by then he'd accidentally broken some of the crystals and suspected he might have closed off access to this cave as well. He drifted on, lost in his own thoughts, and nearly missed another opening in the hall. He let himself drift through it, not knowing what to expect, and at first didn't see anything at all except a fuzzy cloud hovering in the cave. It took his eyes a moment to adjust, and when he realized what he was looking at, it took his breath away. The gigantic cloud was golden cytoserocin, its aurient shimmering beset with blue crystals that seemed to blink on and off. It wasn't merely the gas itself that stopped him short, but the fact that in its form it approximated some of the memory palaces he'd built for himself in older times. As it morphed and undulated it looked like bungalow, a wooden cabin in the murky swap, a castle with spires reaching towards the cavern ceiling, a series of promontories holding lighthouse spires, on and on and on.
He came to a stop in front of the cloud, which was contained within its own static field in the cave. If there had been gravity, he would have fallen to his knees. It wasn't just his imagination, he was sure of it: He was seeing glimpses of the other world, the one he'd created. Every cave he'd gone through had brought it into sharper focus. He stared at the cloud in wonder. He'd forgotten so much. All these buildings and what they represented were gone, erased from his mind by the malfunctioning implant and the crushing grip of the depression. He felt like he was going to cry.
After a long time catching his breath, Lauder turned away and left the cavern without looking back. Whether the structures had really been there, or if his implant was acting up, he didn't care. On his way out he kicked the red crystals as hard as he could, and they came loose along with a mass of rubble, sealing this cave off for good.
His journey continued, hovering through the red corridor, for so long it felt like he'd traveled forever. He didn't mind that, not any longer. There was something here he hadn't expected, though he didn't understand what it was, nor even whether it was an external thing or merely the product of his own exhausted mind.
And it all came to a crashing halt when he went through one last side entrance and saw, whole and untouched, his entire mnemonic world: every building he had ever conceived of, every pattern he had built, every single memory palace, all of them put together in this massive cave he had entered. He did cry now, felling silent tears that hovered in front of him before sticking to the inside of the suit, because he knew he had lost his mind. This could not possibly be here.
The palaces stood in complete silence, crowded together like building blocks on a mat. They shimmered every now and then, turning almost translucent as the gas clouds had been in the other cave. As Lauder stared, he thought he saw a ripple go through them, and then before his eyes the buildings crumbled. Walls came down, windows exploded, dust billowed out in massive gales, and everything tore itself apart until there was nothing left in sight but rubble, rocks and fallen debris. It should have been like watching a representation of his depression at work, Lauder thought, but it wasn't; it felt cleansing, and rejuvenating for a reason he couldn't quite grasp.
He looked down at the fragments below, lying there for miles around and held down by some ghost of gravity, and noticed that they were changing. From the grey cement rose glinting steel; bent wires undulated and writhed until they had become fiber filaments; and glass shards fused and liquefied, pouring themselves into just-born containers to become lenses and windows.
From the debris rose these parts and came together, linking and connecting in front of Lauder's eyes, turning into something so familiar he could barely comprehend it at first.
Ship modules.
They hovered there in countless numbers, slowly matching up to form even more familiar shapes. In total silence, Lauder saw frigates created by the hundreds, designs from all races hovering side by side. Some of them seemed to explode without destruction, disassembling themselves, their constituent parts realigning with others to create larger vessels, cruisers now, battlecruisers, and even an entire battleship that hovered there in the middle like a rock in a river, the smaller ships orbiting and encircling it.
Lauder floated towards the celestial ships, finally getting a sense for just how massive these caverns were, but the moment he hit one it disassembled, giving way like a pool of water. He expected it to have reassembled behind him, but when he looked back he saw that its parts were realigning themselves into something different, a structure he didn't immediately recognize. He glanced at the other ships and saw they were doing the same, but it didn't take long until he realized what was being created. In front of him, the nearest pieces were forming a side view of his own living quarters, down to the chairs and appliances. He looked around and saw that the quarters had been complemented by the entire machinery that usually surrounded them, and beyond it he could see other quarters, structural components, corridors and houses and processing plants, all the parts of the entirety of a space station that was assembling right in front of him.
It began to dawn on him, in this heart of mechanical creation, that the deeper he'd gone into this place, the further he'd been led from the natural world of rocks, ice and gas, and had instead come closer to the intangible, the man-made and the world he'd known. Or, rather, he thought, the world he had formed for himself; the sphere of reference in which he had existed. That realization alone rendered it unimportant whether any of this was real, for it was no more or less real than his conception of it, and as he'd learned in being driven here, his conception of the world around him was everything. In all the ways that mattered, he had created this.
And in his understanding of that, he also understood that it did not end here. It ended only when he felt it should end, and he had further to go still.
He moved through this view of his life, and it gave way as he passed.
Down through the tributary he went, into the red river, but this time it came to an end.
The corridor narrowed down, the red crystals spiraling in on its final opening, a gate leading into somewhere unknown. Lauder hovered there at the threshold, unsure whether he dared go through. This suit would keep him alive for a long time, and he was afraid that if he went through and confronted whatever it was on the other side, he would die. He hadn't imagined he could possibly fear death any longer, but now he did. He wanted to go back into his old world, to the station where he lived, into the quarters where he spent his days, to stand in front of that plasma screen and look at the scenery until his eyes unfocused and he was back among the memory palaces he'd created. He knew he could do it. He had the ability, still, even if it was unreliable; these visions had proven that.
But that same realization reminded him that now he had something at stake, and it was thanks solely to this journey. He had regained something he had thought lost. And he knew that if he were to turn back now, and give up his chance of finding the end of his quest, he would never forgive himself. It might be death, or something else; he didn't know.
He pushed on through, resolving to find out.
This cave was larger than all the rest, so big that he couldn't even see its distant walls. He had no idea longer whether what he saw was real - the cave itself might be miniscule for all he knew - but it didn't matter. He was engaging reality on more than one level.
A light came on in what Lauder suspected was the center of the cavern, a white dot that seemed either tiny or distant. The dot started to grow, fast, its white light approaching Lauder at such high speed that he barely had time to think of how he wished it would not envelop him but would touch him instead; become part of him instead of remaining eternally distant. It got closer, infinitely closer, and Lauder reached out his hand in anticipation and dread. His fingers were outstretched, aching with the reach, and then the white light drew up and touched them. And the whole world changed.
The cave lit up in all its glory, nearly blinding Lauder. The light, bone-white, made every detail visible in a hyperlit grayscale, and Lauder's first thought was that he had found God, some great force beyond normal existence. In front of him the space flickered, showing colorless images from the other caves. In the black and white of a flipbook drawing he saw the stalactites take form in the main hallway of the colony. The ore was created; it grew and bulged with the red veins, now grey in the blinding light, that would turn it to Arkonor. Liquid flowed through the asteroid while gravity still reigned, but its progress slowed and it started to freeze, aligning itself into gigantic crystals. It was pulled in several directions, with gravity clearly giving up on it, so it settled on every surface and kept freezing up.
Lauder was surprised that there was no fire, and wondered where it would come from. At that thought the frozen icicles burst into grey flame, and Lauder realized with a shock that he was the one who had created this. The crystals exploded, their shards floating in mid-air and their flames enveloping them, seemingly baking the pieces until they turned into a shimmering black and white gas. The gas slowly dissipated, leaving various objects behind that were completely still, affixed in mid-air like asteroids in space. It was the pieces Lauder had seen in the last cave, where the ships and the station were created, but they were transparent now. There were rocks inside them, but they, too, were transparent, and as they began a slow trajectory to the walls of the cave, they began to deform, flattening and losing their shape, until they reached the rock and laminated themselves onto it, losing their definition and finally disappearing.
And so the journey had come to a close, and Lauder understood what he was. This was a world of his own creation. The complex of caverns, which was certainly real, nevertheless existed on several levels, and one of them was inside him. In past times he had rebooted himself, flushing out the levels of his mind, and he understood that he had now done the same, facing and destroying everything he had built, things that were often inside him but nonetheless had not been part of him. He had trapped himself inside a world of his own creation, but he was separate from it, which meant that somewhere, there was a way out.
With that realization, which left Lauder grinning like a nitwit, his optical implant stopped working for good, and the world was plunged into darkness.
Lauder kept grinning. The suit had no functional night vision, but it had a focused light that would stay on as long as needed. He would find a way out. The suit had a lot of air, and had emergency rations that could be injected into him, so long as he stayed careful about that one cocktail of his own creation. He had time. It might not work, and he expected that if he ever looked back and saw the darkness he was leaving behind, the abyss would swallow him whole, but in that infinite road of time that stretched out before him, there was at least the faintest glimmer of hope.
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This was a hospital. That much was certain.
Parien, lying in a soft bed, had been slipping in and out of consciousness. Sometimes there had been people in here, talking in low tones and checking on the machines that stood next to his bed. Everything was white. The machines had fuzzy outlines, though that might have been his own eyes. There were tubes everywhere, gossamer strands affixed to his body like he was a string puppet at rest.
Whispered words had drifted into earshot. "Accident" was one. "Battleship" was another. And "capsuleer", though even the whispers seemed to find themselves too loud at that, as if wishing they could emit the word in such a hush as would exist only in pure silence.
At one moment Parien closed his eyes for barely a second, but when he opened them again he saw a man towering over him.
"My name is Silat Enfour," the man said, in a tone that implied this was both grand news and something Parien should have known all along. "You are going to give me answers, crewman."
Parien tried to say something but found his voice had dried up. There was a small hiss, and the parched skin in his throat suddenly felt softer.
"That was the rehydrator," Silat said. "It monitors your needs and applies chemicals based on what your body is trying to do, the less to damage it when you first apply your underused or fragile flesh. You had a nasty turn, Parien. A lot of people did not survive the cataclysm you went through."
Silat leaned in closer and said in a dark tone, "I certainly didn't."
"What can I do for you, sir?" Parien said, his voice raspy and frail despite the rehydrator.
The capsuleer took out a small datapad and inspected its screen for a while, ignoring Parien. At last, still not looking at him, he said, "Do you know me, crewman?"
"No, sir." Parien said. "But I know your name."
The capsuleer gave a mirthless smile at that. "And what does that name mean to you?"
"You are the captain - you were the captain - of the Arc of Defiance," Parien said. His throat stung. "The battleship-class vessel. That I served on. Sir."
"Which makes me...?"
"A capsuleer." This was the first time Parien had seen the captain, or any other capsuleer for that matter. He found himself hoping the man would turn around at some point so Parien could see the neural socket supposedly embedded in his neck. It was a strange, silly and stupid hope, and thus seemed entirely appropriate to the situation.
"What was the Arc's last mission?"
"You took us into deadspace. Word had it you'd found another ancient gate that led to some ruins."
"Some ruins."
"Some ruins now occupied by Gurista forces, sir," Parien said. "I expect your aim was to empty them of their valuables."
"Do you presume to know my thoughts?"
"I doubt anyone does, sir," Parien said, regretting it immediately. The words were an insult, and only his weak voice with its supplicant tone carried it through with apparent acceptance on the capsuleer's part.
The capsuleer stepped closer and leaned in slightly, regarding Parien with the kind of gaze one would a backwards student. "Do you know why you are here?"
"The Arc exploded, sir. We were ripped to shreds."
"That is what happened, yes. But that is not why you are here, in this place, at this time."
"Sir?"
The capsuleer said, in a perfectly even tone, "I have taken it upon myself to pay for your care, for there are some questions I want answered. If the information I get is satisfactory, then you will be released from here soon enough, to meet your family, friends and fellow surviving crewmembers. If they are not, then this-" he pointed at the rehydrator, whose myriad tubes were connected to Parien in places he preferred not to contemplate, "-this will pump something else into your system, and you will be extinguished like a candle. No one will ask any questions. No one will point a finger. The money I'm funneling into the upkeep of this equipment will merely be put to a slightly different use. You will be someone's two-hour overtime of paperwork, and then you will be expunged from this world. Do not disappoint me, crewman."
Parien swallowed. It still stung, but he welcomed the feeling, reminding him as it did that he was still alive.
"What do you want from me, sir?" he said.
"I was in the middle of dismantling the Gurista fleet, and had already targeted their colonial base, when my guns failed to reload. All of them. And as if that wasn't bad enough, my drones decided to develop free will at that precise moment, rocketing off to fight each their separate ship in some brief, suicidal ballet. I sat there, surrounded by these little Gurista flies with their tiny little poisonous stings, and I was held fast there while they sucked the life right out of me."
Silat began to pace the room.
"When one thing goes wrong, Parien, everything goes wrong. I've learned that, out there. Your guns don't reload, alright. What's going to be next? Oh, it's the drones!" He raised his hands in the air, a mock expression of surprise on his beardless face. "Whatever could be the matter? Nevermind, I'm sure we'll be right as rain from now on. No, hold on! What's this?" Silat lowered his hands and glared at Parien. "Care to guess what went wrong next, crewman?"
Parien closed his eyes and leaned back on his cool, soft pillow, letting it swallow him. "The escape pods."
"The escape pods," Silat repeated after him, as if they'd had a minor epiphany. "Not my own capsule, Parien, not right away, though some people with a grudge against me took care of that two systems later. But for the ones on that ship - those six thousand people who worked with you, Parien - those pods didn't even last that long. Do you know how long they lasted, Parien?"
Parien, still lying on the pillow, was quiet. He stared at the ceiling, seeing the capsuleer only out of the corner of his vision. In that faint edge of nothing he saw Silat raise his hand and press something on his datapad.
His throat began to burn. Then his stomach, and his intestines, and his veins and his limbs and his face. He started to cough and thrash, gasping for air while trying to shake off the pain. It was like liquid mercury had been poured into him. He tried to tear out the tubes that stuck out of every part of his body, but either he didn't have the strength or they were simply too well affixed. Through the haze of agony he heard Silat say, "Wherever this path leads, crewman, you will find it much easier to traverse if you go with my guidance. Answer the question."
The burning subsided a little. Parien caught his breath again. He said, "I heard ... I heard that a lot of the pods were destroyed right away. They were buffeted away from the ship when it exploded, but instead of heading off-radar like usual, many of them disintegrated. Not the outlying ones, though, with the crew and the families that had been working on nonessential tasks; those got out safe. It was the edge pods, the ones at the core that can only leave a few seconds before the ship literally falls to pieces."
"The ones where you work," Silat said.
"The ones where I work."
"Your pod survived," Silat added. "So did a few others. But many hundreds of people working in the core of the ship lost their lives that day."
Parien, still waiting for the burning poison to slowly flush out of his veins, did not ask Silat what he cared about the fate of his crew.
"Here is the next question, and you will want to answer it honestly," Silat said. "What did you do to cause this?"
"I ... I ..." Parien began. He fell silent, thought for a moment. "Can I ask a question in return, sir? It'll help me answer your own."
"Do it."
"What possible reason could you have to think that I had anything to do with this terrible, terrible event?"
Silat moved over to Parien's bed. His head blotted out the light, casting his face into shadow. "Because I was suspicious. Because I had your books audited, yours and everyone else's. Because I paid a fortune for every life that survived the Arc's explosion to be canvassed for clues of sabotage, and eventually, as I knew they would, they led me like beacons to you." He took out his silver planner, that instrument of truth and pain, and held it aloft. "Because the Guristas paid you for your work, you little worm."
Parien was speechless, first in amazement, then in agony.
***
"I disabled the reload procedures."
Parien's senses began to return. He still saw stars twinkling in his vision, and the room spun slowly like a dark grey moon. He was pretty sure he'd crapped himself during one of the pain spasms, but his body was too numb to tell and he didn't dare check; lest he discover a grossly wet patch in the soft white sheets or, even worse, that the gossamer tubes that extended from his body had been installed there as well and taken care of the problem.
He said it again, like a magic ward against more pain. "I disabled the reload procedures. I'd worked the gun section often enough to know how it functioned, and it doesn't take a genius to override them so long as you've got access."
"How did you get access?" Silat asked in a calm tone.
"I used a datakey from a crewmember. He'd been reassigned to drone control and I told him I needed to check up on shell integrity."
"And the disabling?"
"It's easy enough if you've got the timing," Parien said. "If you know what shells are going to be last out and first in, you just damage both of them. Make the last spent shell leave something in the barrels that doesn't get cleaned up properly, and make the first reloaded shell catch on it." Parien took a deep breath. "And before you ask, the drones are even easier."
Silat stared at him for a while. The machines in the room hummed, a faint sound with a throbbing undertone like a heart beating in secret.
At last the capsuleer said, "There wasn't much to be analyzed from the wreckage, nor from the recorded signals that I received in my pod. Some anomalies, but there are always anomalies, and they take you down a thousand paths of guesswork."
He walked around the bed, hefting his silver datapad. "This tells me all there is to tell, but not everything I need to know. A ship is not a ship; it is an incredibly complex collection of activities, bound in constant motion. It is more like an organism than a machine. There are safeguards and more safeguards, but those can't protect you forever. If someone comes along who is inventive and insightful enough - and you were, though you murdered hundreds as a result," Silat said, not with rancor in his voice but with a tired exasperation, as if his student of hope had failed him again, "If someone manages something like that, then it is because they had honestly set themselves to the task. They needed a clarity of vision that is unique to those for whom their task has become their very purpose of being. A life is usually at stake."
Silat looked at Parien, with eyes that had seen more death than Parien ever would, and asked, for whatever reason, "You've said how you did it. Now tell me the why."
"Drugs," Parien said. "I was in deep."
Silat raised the silver device, then hesitated. "You know what this will do."
Parien kept his gaze on the capsuleer. "It was drugs."
Silat made as if to press something on his datapad, then hesitated, sighed, and sat on the chair beside Parien's bed. "If you had been a drug user, you'd never have gotten on my ship. Drugs are part of the eligibility scans I run before you're signed on, and those same scans are continued throughout your service to me. I know that some pilots don't care about that kind of thing, but I do, and I keep a tight ship. If the Guristas had somehow leveraged you into what you did, either to keep your supply line open or to pay back a drug loan, it'd have to mean you were so deeply mired that you were still an active user. And on my ship, under my command, you better learn to hold it in, because a junkie won't even take a single piss without it being checked, analyzed and flagged to the monitoring crew at once. Do you understand this?"
Parien said nothing.
"Do you understand, crewman?" Silat asked again, in an angry tone.
"Yeah. Yes, I understand."
"So drugs had nothing to do with it. Despite that, I know the Guristas were involved, because I have records that show you contacted them well before the crash. That was a mistake on your part. Whatever you were cooking up with these people you managed to keep remarkably secret, except for that one particular message. Even the payment you received from them after the crash was nigh-on undetectable, with only the barest traces of a connection to your own finances. You would have noticed it, I'm sure, when you started receiving interest notifications on the assets you suddenly had dominion over, but nobody else would have known where to look. If I hadn't been hunting specifically for something like this, I'd never have found it."
Parien, who had not blinked, stared at Silat. He said, "Do you know who sent it? Who within the Guristas organization?"
"You know, that's the one last piece of mystery," Silat said, with poison enthusiasm. "It didn't originate from the Guristas military section. It came from their mining ops people. The colonists."
Parien, unblinking, gazed open-mouthed at his torturer.
"That is the end of my information," Silat said, unheeding of the patient's stunned reaction. "You're working for the enemies now, but I'm quite honestly stumped."
He leaned in again and said, in a whisper, "There is a point where your brain knows it is about to die. Everything passes in a flash, like a dream played at hyperspeed, the whole experience tinted with that quivering fear your subconscious vomits up: That this is the last, this is the end, this is the final run before the infinite nothing. I have been cloned more times than I can recall, and this is the one part of the process that I will never, in my life of lives, get used to. So you come along and bring it on me, along with hundreds of others on my ship; you, with your cottonball mystery, your little life that'll be extinguished with just the hint of a flame, that's light as a speck of dust, and that nevertheless refuses, refuses to unravel."
He leaned back, caught his breath. "I need to know, Parien. There's something hidden here, behind your glazed and bloodshot eyes, and I want it to appear. If I do not get this, then you will not even be permitted to die quietly."
Parien thought about this. He looked at the tubes that snaked out from the machines beside him and led underneath his sheets. He looked at the white room he was in, and even at the soft white pillow he rested on. He looked back at Silat in wonder. "I really am nothing to you, am I? No more than those people who died. Just this one mystery. I bet the money that went into this whole setup could feed a family for a year."
"Your last chance," Silat said. He did not bother to heft the remote.
Parien stared at him. Then he took a deep breath and said, "I was on your crew the day we found the first ancient gate. It took us to a Gurista mining colony that was guarded by their forces. We destroyed those ships, and anyone of theirs who didn't make it into a rescue pod was not a concern of ours. They were pirates, we thought, and deserved no better.
"Then we turned to the colony. It would have been enough to disable the turrets. It really would. And to destroy the military cache that was located at the back of the complex, because that's the only one that held anything you could take. The rest of the place, all it had was people doing their jobs. But you targeted every building, and you fired the hybrids, and you blew up the colonies with everyone on them, and no escape pods, and nobody having a chance against you. I saw it all, from the core of your ship; me and all the others who were in charge of the reloading, and in charge of the drone control, and when God's hammer came down we were just as much at fault as you.
"Something gave way in me. Some barrier I'd erected came crashing down. I've been a crewman for a long while now, and there was nothing special about this trip. We merely found a good location, destroyed the opposition, erased all that remained on a whim from our pilot, took the loot and got out. It never does matter, when you're on a capsuleer's ship. You go where he takes you. You load and he locks. Whatever's on screen is only in your way. Even a colony full of workers and families, whose sole misfortune was to be on the other side. They forfeit their existence through happenstance. By the sheer dint of falling under the gaze of an immortal and his followers, they do not deserve to live any longer. All these lives, fit for nothing but death and ruin."
Parien stopped, swallowed. The gossamer threads moistened his throat. There was no other sound in the room but the thrumming heartbeat of the machines.
He continued, "I wanted to kill you for it, Silat. But you are just one person, and I didn't think I would ever reach you. If I had the strength right now, and the bravery, I would reach out and I would throttle you.
"But even if I went after you, there would be revenge. My entire family, distant as they may be, and anyone I've ever befriended. They would all die.
"And besides ... you're just the one crazy top of the tree. You're like a child with a toy. I'm not even sure you're all there. Everyone like you is a frightening mystery, not loved. I hope you know that.
"But the people who enabled you, the ones who kept everything running and went out drinking afterwards, bragging about the destruction; the crew I worked with who did not benefit in the slightest from this and did it anyway, allowing you your crazy stunts, they were the ones who were truly culpable. They needed to die."
Silat said, quietly, "You know there were many of your crewmembers who had nothing to do with the attack or its mechanics."
Parien closed his eyes, breathed deep, then continued as if there had been no interruption, "When we got in from that mission I felt like a ghost. I talked to some people whom I knew dealt in crime, and I asked that a message be relayed to someone with the Guristas, a person who would know the colony we'd just destroyed and could relay the stupid, empty words I sent them.
"It was an apology, Silat. I sent a brief message telling them who I was and who I worked for, and I said I was sorry. I did not give them any other information, not about my financial accounts, nor about the ship's movements, nor anything else. They must have tracked me, and the money they paid speaks for itself, but I did not do it for them or anything they could offer. In the end, what happened on the Arc's last trip - and I was supposed to be one of the losses, but I guess my pod didn't break - was simply me, trying to make amends to the world."
Silat sat and stared at him. "So you sabotaged the pods and led the ship to destruction."
Parien nodded.
Silat got up. "I was going to kill you, but that's no longer a role I can play. I should add that if you had truly meant to make amends, you would have ensured you would die in the crash. The fact that you did not may mean something, or nothing. Perhaps you wanted to play a vengeful god. Perhaps you merely wanted to know how it feels to be one of the immortals. I've no interest in finding out."
Parien leaned back on the pillow. "Just end it," he said.
The capsuleer ignored him. "Since you took it upon yourself to be the judge, jury and executioner on the behalf of the Guristas, it's only right and proper that the ones who lost their own loved ones due to your actions get a say in your own fate." He pulled out the silver datapad and entered a message, then said, "So your stay here is at an end. I suggest you start removing those tubes. It'll be painful, but better than what awaits you if you dither."
"What?" Parien said.
"I don't associate much with your kind, but I'm told that spaceship crew are a tough bunch of people. I've just sent the gist of this conversation to one of the crew heads. He doesn't waste time during missions, so I imagine he's already making calls and rounding up people."
Silat put the datapad back in his pocket and headed for the door. Before leaving, he turned to Parien and smiled. "The acolytes are coming, you little god of destruction," he said. "You will want to run now."
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"You're all right. Come on, take my hand. There you go. Let's get you up."
The world was still spinning on strange axes. Olaer couldn't see well enough to find his bearings. Colony lights were dim at this hour, to keep the inhabitants sedate. It hadn't worked.
Someone had helped him to his feet and now had their hands wrapped around his shoulders. "Can you stand?" the person said. It was a young voice.
Olaer, who was not young, nodded and set his feet. He felt the hand lift gently off him.
"Thank you," he said. He swayed a little, but remained upright. "What is your name?"
"Yane," the young voice said.
Olaer turned to look, and focused as hard as he could. His guardian was a Thukker, like himself. Olaer could not remember seeing him on the space colony, but in Thukker places this was perfectly normal. Their people were travelers.
They were in the Great Wildlands, home of the Thukker Tribe and current sanctuary for those Starkmanir and Nefantars who had fled or been freed from Ammatar and were waiting to be let into the Minmatar Republic proper.
In the meantime, the refugees waited here, guests in the place Olaer called home, and when they had nothing to do they found something to do. There had been three of them, and they had not been happy to hear what Olaer had to say.
He took a step, tumbled, and nearly fell on his face. Yane's hands grabbed his shoulder again and pulled him gently upright.
"Alright," Yane said. "enough of that. Do you live nearby?"
"My name ... my name is Olaer," he replied. It felt important he establish this.
"Well then, Olaer. Home?"
"Not that close," Olaer said. It wasn't too far off, either, but in his current state he doubted he could even cross the street unaided, let alone get home without collapsing from exhaustion. He did not intend to have anyone carry him there. He was not that old yet.
"Then we're going to my place so you can catch your breath," Yane said. "I live right over there." He pointed towards a window on the other side of the street. "Lucky that I heard the trouble. People don't help others out much, in this place."
"No, they don't," Olaer said with regret.
***
"So what happened?" Yane said.
Olaer gently rubbed his side and gingerly stretched his feet. He was sitting in the apartment's only chair. The adrenaline cloud had evaporated, giving way to piercing rays of pain from his battered body.
"I told them who they were," Olaer said.
He looked around. The apartment was dark and bare. It was all one room, lit with a single bulb in the ceiling, with no internal walls and no apparent source of entertainment except for a bunch of metallic-looking blocks in one corner. Beside his chair there was a desk, a metal alloy like everything else on the colony, and on the desk there was an old-model datapad good for little more than reading and touch-screen writing. There wasn't much here to evince a personality, good or bad. But the man had saved him.
"And who were they?" Yane said. He was young, probably in his late twenties, and looked extremely strong. He carried himself like a man wearing heavy armor.
Olaer decided to take the plunge. "Traitors. Traitors and leeches."
Yane raised his eyebrows ."Did you say that to them?" he asked with a wide grin. "No wonder they beat you."
Olaer waved his hand, "No, no. Not like that, at least. They were being loud and obnoxious, and I was doing my nightly walk in the fresh air. Their behavior so annoyed me that I told them they'd be better off doing an honest day's work than keeping people up on the colony. So they crossed the street and, well, I had a moment to regret my old mouth shooting off one last time."
"Why traitors?" Yane asked.
"Thukkers who are moving to the Republic lands. Settling," he spat the word, "and finding some stability, whatever that means in the Thukker head. The Starkies and Nefs, I'll grant, had little choice but to come here, even if I wish they'd have retained enough of their dirty slave roots to help us with our business. But I've no patience for a Thukker who doesn't want to be one. I hope I haven't offended you, in case you're moving as well," he said, leaning back in his chair and gently rubbing his hands. "I've had my share of beatings for the night."
Yane grinned. "It's fine. This ain't much of a home, as you can tell. I'm a crewman on a Thukker ship, and I spend most of my time out in space. I ain't settling anywhere. Besides," he added, "I've kept an eye on the new guys, and I don't like them. At all."
The old man, relieved, said, "I agree. And I generally tend to like people. I don't mind these guys for who they are or what they've done, and I'd never say no to someone's second chance. But you've got to make something of it. Not just run, then expect someone else to solve all your problems."
"Didn't used to be like this, I guess," Yane said.
"No, it didn't. People knew who they were and what they were capable of, and even the most rootless of meatheads in the Tribe had enough sense to act like real men, and enough strength to be criticized without turning into monsters."
"The Thukkers that moved to Republic lands, they've gotten soft and weak," Yane said, and Olaer wasn't sure which of them was echoing the other's thoughts. "Nefantars are either arrogant or kissassy, and the Starkmanirs are just ... well, they're simply stupid. You try to talk to them and all you see in their eyes is your own reflection, staring back at you."
The old man said, "And I don't like talking about people like that-" He sent a stern look to Yane, who had the decency to look away, "-But sometimes you can generalize. These poor people haven't been properly integrated. And they should be sensible enough to keep their mouths shut, their eyes open and their hands in their pockets until they learn the new ways. Your past should strengthen you, not be an anchor or a cloak."
Yane nodded. "Did you know the Amarrians, even though they ban full-body cloning, permit you to be regrown? That's weakness. That Aritcio guy they cut up, he's now back in the game, all nice and pretty. They should've let him be like he was at the end. Shredded. Let it strengthen him. They shouldn't have rebuilt him the way he did."
"You think he would be the same as he is now, if they had?" Olaer asked.
"I think he'd be honest, to himself and others. And he'd have an image that would keep people on their toes. You don't say no to the scars."
Something in his voice raised a flag in Olaer's mind, but he left it for the time being. He looked around and said, "Looks like a typical Thukker apartment. You don't have any problems saying no, I can see. What're those metal things in the corner?"
Yane laughed. "I'm not here very often, and they're weights. There's magnetism in them, or something like that, so you can put them together or take them apart." He demonstrated, taking two metal blocks and holding them up to one another. They grabbed on with a clang. Yane let go with one hand, letting the blocks hang perpendicular from the other. He grabbed hold again, twisted the blocks slightly, and they detached.
"Simple, clean and definite," Olaer said.
"Damn straight," Yane said. "When I'm here, I weightlift as much as I can, often to the point where I can't even hold my pen."
"So you write as well?"
"When my hands stop shaking, yeah," Yane said with a shyish grin. He walked over to the desk and picked up the pen and pad, then started slowly pacing the room, scribbling aimlessly on its surface. "I like to keep them in use. Keep moving."
"Do you write a lot?" Olaer said. It felt important, though he couldn't say why.
"Yeah, actually I do. About anything, really. And we agree on the immigrants, by the way," he added. "I don't mean to be insulting when I talk about them, and I definitely don't hate my own people. But I think you and I, we agree. We're approaching the same destination, maybe just from opposite directions."
Olaer looked at him and at the pen in his hands.
"What do you see?" Yane asked. He came to a stop by the weight blocks.
"I should be seeing the weightlifting, because it fits you. That pen should stick out like an eyesore in this barren image of power you project. If I were a foolish man who did not pay attention to my surroundings and the people around me - like I believe some of the new arrivals do, though not all of them by far - I would think it strange that someone who clearly lives for the strength, and projects this kind of image, would be writing at all."
He stood up, grateful that his legs didn't complain, and walked over to Yane. "But I don't find it strange. Because you're the opposite. You're a thinking man clad in an exterior of strength and an aura of bullishness. Why?"
Yane gave him a strange, long look. He walked back to the desk and put away the datapad, then rested his hands on the back of the chair, his back to Olaer. He sighed.
"My family travelled," he said. "Sometimes for business, and sometimes to escape trouble. One trip, we were on the run and only found port in a dark colony that catered to bad people. It was hard times and we had to make our stay there, no matter who else was in that place. You know how much politics matters when you're a kid in a strange place? Nothing."
He turned to face Olaer, and said in a voice overlaid with glass strength, "And I met this Amarr girl. She was with her own family of missionary businessmen. We were ten. Stupid puppy love."
He reached out without looking and picked up the pen from the datapad, hefted it in his hand like a spear. "And then my parents found out. They and everyone else. Like I said, it was dark times."
Olaer's mouth felt dry. "What did they do to you?"
In a voice that sounded like he was talking as much to himself as anyone in the room, Yane said, "I am going to show you something I have not shown to many."
He took off his shirt and turned. The single light reflected off the destroyed skin on his back. The scars ran so deep it was as if they had penetrated to the bone. In the glare they reminded Olaer of ridges in a valley of fire; like lines on the eye of the sun, brighter than bright.
"What happened to you?" he whispered.
"I was rebuilt. The Thukker way."
Olaer had to lean against a wall. For a while there was silence in the room, and the old man listened hard for the quiet noise of the night outside, if only to remind himself that civilization still existed.
"What do you write?" he said at last.
Yane nodded, as if the old man had confirmed something. "Whatever I need to get out of my head," he answered.
Olaer took a breath, thought for a moment, then ambled over to the weights. He ran his finger over one of the blocks. It was cold, and its scratches and discoloration spoke of heavy use. "When you're not saving defenseless people from the attentions of the mob."
Yane's gaze narrowed. "Yes."
"Have you risen above your past, you think?"
"Yes." The word came out like a whip.
"You mentioned Aritcio. You clearly keep an eye on him."
"I pay attention to politics," Yane said.
"What are the five houses of Amarr?"
"Ardishapur, Kor-Azor, Sarum obviously, Tash-Murkon and Kador."
"What was the name of the assassinated second-in-command of the Caldari State?"
Yane stared at him.
Olaer nodded, and hobbled back to the chair. His legs really were starting to hurt. He sat down and rubbed his shins.
"Your attentions are quite focused, young man," he said. "Narrowly, even." He took a deep breath. "Sounds to me like you haven't entirely let go."
The light reflected off the young man's scars. Olaer realized he hadn't witnessed what happened to the assailants. He had heard someone intervene, under the beatings and his rapidly fading consciousness, and when he awoke they were all gone. It seemed like it should matter.
"I don't know what you're thinking, but you're wrong," Yane said in a dead tone.
"I think you're very lonely," Olaer said. He got up to his feet and made his way over to Yane. He raised his hand to lay it on the young man's shoulder, but Yane said, "Don't," without meeting his gaze.
Olaer sighed and walked away, slowly and carefully, out the door and into the night.
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In New Eden there was now a war, and in this war the capsuleers duked it out in the darker parts of space, and in those parts where lawlessness reigned there followed the capsuleers like remoras a type of people who would pick off the tattered remains like scraps of flesh from a rapidly calcifying bone.
They had reached Adek's mining station and torn through everything. He was running so fast his lungs burned with the effort.
Most parts of the colony were blessedly empty, its inhabitants having fled the war zone for fear of capsuleers. And just when those who remained had been getting a handle on running the colony with a skeleton crew, the scavengers had arrived; a small team of pirates using the capsuleers' presence as cover to strip the colonies of all useable hardware.
The thieves had been clever. They'd detonated several surface explosives before even venturing into the station, causing several colony sections to collapse or decompress. The explosives had been full of high-reaction incendiary gas that had eaten into the oxygen onboard the colony. The crew that hadn't died from fire or structural collapse had choked to death, clawing at their throats. The brave few survivors who had tried to bar the pirates' entry in the boarding areas had been killed on the spot, burned and shredded beyond recognition by the invaders' lasers.
Adek rushed to one of the emergency chambers and fitted himself inside a spacesuit. It was a clunky thing that would slow him down, but he had no idea where he was going, and it might involve one of the airless locales. He glanced up at a monitoring screen that scrolled through the few rooms still in use, but quickly averted his gaze. It showed him nothing but death.
He moved on in a delirium of fear, and a few airlocks later fell to a choking halt, his legs refusing to hold him up any longer. He lay on the ground for entirely too long, eyes shut tight, expecting at any moment to feel his skin burst and split under the unyielding glare of the scavengers' lasers.
When nothing happened, he risked a small peek and found that he'd made it to the Pits.
This was a vast cavern, full of dark and echo. The center portion of its circular floor was a giant gaping maw, a sheer drop many storeys down with sharp rocky outcroppings on all sides. Those outcroppings in turn were pitted with large holes, each of which had a solid metal covering. The floor around Adek was dotted with mining and excavation equipment, with everything from pickaxes and miniature mining lasers to multijointed MTACs with surface cling abilities.
This was the heart of the operation. The Pits' metal core was the first thing that had shown up on surface scanning back when the asteroid was being settled, and it remained the main source of the colony's ore output. But the rock was a fickle thing. Many of its tunnels, cracks and crevices led directly to empty space outside, and more than one exploring miner had perished before they'd managed to block off all the holes and properly oxygenate the place. Each of these dangerous exits was covered with an automated shaft lid. They could be opened remotely on those occasions where a brave employee was willing to spelunking, hooked onto a rescue line or strapped into an MTAC, but as the entire Pits area had to be evacuated first, this was rarely done.
Adek crawled towards the edge.
They'd be coming here soon. They had been murdering their way through each section of the colony, clad in combat gear and armed with laser guns, and sealing off the parts of their passage to prevent anyone from getting around them or backtracking.
When a laser weapon fires at human flesh, what happens is a sizzling, bubbling explosion. He'd seen the results on the monitors.
It really was a long way down. If a body went over the security railing and jumped with all its might, it might clear the safety nets and the outcroppings below and plunge straight to the bottom. The result would be an instant death, not painless but near enough compared to a solid-state laser beam bursting through one's chest. The covered holes in the depths of the Pits looked like pocked flesh, burnt to cinders. Adek thought he might vomit in his suit.
He rolled onto his back and waited for the inevitable. He tried to empty his mind, but it kept returning to the holes in the rock, and to the scavengers rushing in. Entrances and exits. In the haze of adrenaline and quiet fear he imagined them rushing into the Pits, running right over him and going out the tunnels, into empty space.
He blinked.
All roads led to the Pits. No matter where the invaders were, they would eventually find their way here. It was the most important part of the colony, for if something were to go wrong here, either with the equipment or the place itself, it would be much harder to contain and correct than in any of the smaller, sealed-off corridors that snaked their way through the rest of the base.
Adek rolled onto his stomach again and stared into the Pits. There were several tunnels down there, shut and sealed off, that he knew led straight into space.
A small, stupid hope arose in his mind. It was so faint that he did not even dare acknowledge it. Instead, he got up and walked up to the nearest MTAC, a metal skeleton used for heavy-duty mining work. He activated its wireless controlling unit and grabbed its remote, then rushed to the corridor that led to the Pits' control area.
Even though the entire area was still quite well oxygenated, he kept his suit on. He made his way to the elevator and took it upstairs, counting the seconds it took him to arrive. He stepped out and into the central control room, whose windows overlooked the entirety of the Pits. It functions were focused almost solely on this core of the colony, but there were a few concessions to life outside the Pits, mainly in the form of activity detectors. If the doors that connected outlying colony sections were put into use, it would show up here.
Adek keyed in his security code and sounded a general alarm. Klaxons blared in the Pits and computerized voices called out danger. Immediately, he saw increased activity of movement that steadily crept closer to his area. The scavengers were coming.
He waited and watched through the windows above, feeling entirely too calm.
When they finally came, little figures trickling in through the doors far below, he detached his facemask, turned off his oxygen flow, ran to a corner in the room and vomited so hard he thought he'd torn something inside himself.
As soon as he could, he stumbled back to the control desk. The intruders were moving about in the Pits, trying to figure out the source of the problem. Adek checked the motion detectors and saw a couple more blink. Two more men entered the Pits right after, and the detectors fell silent. They were all there.
Adek's stomach lurched.
Everyone who ever worked in the Pits learned the override sequence. There was only one, and you hoped you would never in your life have to use it.
He keyed it in. Down in the Pits, metal shutters clanged down and shut off every single entrance to the area. Adek imagined the noise they'd have made, but the echoing blare from the klaxons drowned out all other sound. The intruders looked around in panic, hefting their lasers at dark crevices. Adek said a silent thanks to whoever had thought to set the control room so high, outside of their view.
There was another sequence that allowed you to open the holes in the Pits, but it wouldn't work on its own. All it would do was disengage the regular locks, but if the Pits had gone into lockdown mode the holes wouldn't open automatically.
Unless one had an agent on location, as it were. Adek hefted his MTAC remote.
Before the astonished eyes of the murderous intruders, one of the MTACs lurched into action, walked past them, broke through the security railing and launched itself into the Pits.
It landed in the security net, cut its way through and ended up on one of the ledges below, a drop that took several seconds but was still well above the final pit. The ledge it lay on led to one of the blocked tunnels.
The MTAC walked from the precipice over to the sealed tunnel, hefted a limb armed with a mining laser and started burning through the door.
It took a while, and to their credit the intruders didn't take long to kick into action. Various sections on the MTAC's skeleton blinked under kaleidoscopic laser fire, but the scavengers' weapons were antipersonnel guns and did little to harm the machine. By the time one of them finally ventured into the Pits and started carefully climbing down to the ledge, it was too late. Adek saw the door give way and set the MTAC to push forward with all its might. It did, the pistons in its metal legs shoving against the rock, and the door slowly crumpled inward under its thrust.
Its journey from here on would be blind, but that was immaterial. Adek called up schematics of this tunnel and saw that it led in a nearly straight line to its crevice point. He set the MTAC to march forward, mining laser held forth, and waited.
By the time the intrepid scavenger had made it down to the tunnel mouth, the MTAC reported resistance. It had reached the wall. Adek forced it forward as hard as he could.
At first there was nothing. The signal from the remote merely blinked off, and for a frozen second of terror Adek thought the machine had broken. Then there was a rumble, as if an animal were waking from its sleep, and Adek saw the intruders scramble for the doors, banging on them and firing with their lasers. He smiled. The MTAC had gone through; the Pits had been ruptured. Space was claiming its own.
As several warnings sounded in the room, of low oxygen, low pressure and critical danger, Adek calmly re-attached his face mask and sealed off his suit. He took one last look out the window and couldn't help but laugh as he saw the vultures clinging pitifully to whatever they could. One or two had lost their grips and were being sucked into the Pits already, to be tossed out into space like refuse.
They all wore suits, though, and once all the air went out of the area, they would be able to move again. He couldn't risk that.
He made his way to the elevators and went down to a storage area on the ground floor, next to the Pits. There was a small squadron of MTACs here, many of whom were outfitted for dead space work. He got into one, checked that the claws on its limbs were in good function, and used its arm to unseal the door into the Pits.
Immediately he felt the drag, as if his body wanted to freefall. The pull was immense. Thankfully, the MTACs claws gripped the floor with ease.
The intruders noticed him, their eyes wide with shock and anger, but the few that remained were no threat. Most suits had emergency wire loops that let you lasso yourself to some fixed spot, and a few of the intruders had managed this. Unfortunately for them, their weapons hadn't been fixed in the same way, and all they could do was flail madly as Adek approached.
He raised his machine hand, and he cut through their wires.
Most of them panicked and some visibly screamed inside their masks. One or two even refused to tumble away and instead grabbed on to the mechanical arm, where they clung on for dear life. He bashed them against the wall until they broke or let go.
Before too long, it was over. Adek was alone. He marched his MTAC back through the empty Pits and into the control section, closed it and sealed it, and got as far as the elevator entrance before collapsing in tears.
Eventually he hauled himself back up and took the elevator to the top floor, where he entered the control room and inspected the damage from up high.
Everything that had not been nailed down in the Pits was gone, including the intruders. It was as if God had swept his hand over the earth and started anew.
Adek was about to remove his facemask when a motion light lit up.
He froze. It was one door, on the outer rim of the colony. Someone had stayed behind. One of the invaders was alive.
The light lit again, and again, each time a little closer to the control room.
This was the end, Adek thought. Everything was over. The whole world as he knew it would be extinguished.
For no reason other than to have something to do, he cast his view outside his little world, using the control room's scanners to check on traffic elsewhere in the solar system. He discovered that the capsuleers had come. One of them was even tooling around quite nearby.
He considered sending a plea for help, but discounted the idea. You didn't ask the gods of destruction to help you in times of need.
Adek drummed his fingers on the control panel. The gods of destruction were here. There was a god of destruction outside his colony.
The capsuleers were hungry gods, whimsical and easy to anger. And it occurred to Adek that it was, in fact, possible to call on the powers of the gods. One merely needed to present a worthy sacrifice.
The little part of his mind that had cut the wires down in the Pits now took over again. He typed out a message and set it to general broadcast. It wouldn't reach far, for the colony had only limited transmission rights, but if he were lucky it would reach far enough. He keyed it to send, then checked the motion sensors. The scavenger was approaching fast.
Adek swiftly resealed his helmet and fled the control room, running down a different corridor that would lead him to the emergency supplies warehouse. From there he would be cut off, with no escape routes and no way back to the colony proper. He'd be a rat in a cage.
He reached the warehouse and immediately sealed its door. It wouldn't hold back a man with a laser, at least not for very long, but then, nothing would last for very long, one way or another.
Adek searched quickly until he found an interstellar transport container. This one was as large as an empty house, cold and austere. He unsealed one of its entry points, pulled it open and entered. It was freezing cold inside, but his suit would protect him from the worst. He sealed the door from the inside, found his way over to the personnel transport section, strapped himself in and waited.
He imagined the progression of events. By now the intruder might have found his way to the control room, where he would see the message being broadcast to the capsuleer. Even if the intruder shot the control board to bits, the message would continue to be relayed. It was a summons to the capsuleer, announcing that the station had been overrun with hostile pirates and that he was to destroy the place, rescue its precious cargo and get out before being swarmed by enemy forces.
It wasn't a total lie, Adek reasoned to himself. He was very precious cargo. There was only one of him.
There was a muted hissing noise in the distance. The intruder was making his way through the warehouse doors.
Adek closed his eyes, breathed deeply and prayed.
Before too long, the hissing noise was overtaken by a rumbling tremor. The container, which must have weighed a ton, began to shake. The noise rose to deafening levels. Explosions sounded somewhere in the distance.
Adek prayed.
The gods were coming.
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As he watched his crew slowly bring the end of the world to light, Antar found it increasingly difficult to see this as anything but the end of himself.
A long time ago he had realized that the full extent of a life demanded the experience of both pleasure and pain; piety and indulgence. He had explored the darker side with fervor and reveled in what he found. With the Blood Raiders he had found not only the other, missing side of his own self, but fellow souls who shared that same drive. Religion and hedonism were finally combined in a cult to the individual that nonetheless presented Antar with the strongest ties he had ever felt to any group of people. He had found himself, home at last.
Part of those ties had been the mutual hunger for more, which no one truly thought would ever be sated. It was a real but unstated pleasure of anyone's life to have a mission that would not be completed; for if they were to reach the end of the road, there would be nowhere else to go.
Antar walked through the ship, inspecting its metal interiors. He stroked a hand over a cold wall. This dead thing was the end of the Blood Raiders.
Once your dreams had come true, Antar reasoned, all you wanted would be gone, and you would have nothing left to do but to die in resigned silence. The mass harvesting would fulfill every possible demand the Sani Sabik could possibly have for blood, and if they were to find their thirst rising to even greater heights, the power of this superweapon, wielded correctly, would establish Bleeding farms great enough to utterly quench it. They were done.
Antar had not foreseen this end for himself. He had expected to go out in fire.
So when a watchful crewmember reported a Thukker vessel creeping in, and when he saw where the Thukker ship was headed - not for their vessel but for the drones and the hive - he smiled, and then grinned so wide he had to turn away.
And he told his people not to worry.
***
Most of New Eden would never know the horror of Antar's deeds, or the bravery of the Thukker crew. They would only know the cataclysm which followed, and the pain of millions as they suffered a fate that would satiate even the most devoted Blood Raider's thirst for widespread destruction.
There was no pain for Antar or Kotan. Existence for the crewmen aboard both ships had ceased without their being aware of its instantaneous termination, as the constituent particles of their physical selves were torn apart and scattered into the void at velocities approaching the speed of light.
It was just as well for them.
Of all the people touched by the event they had triggered, theirs was the most humane fate. For neither captain knew that the immense stock of isogen-5 which detonated before their eyes was entangled with numerous stockpiles in even greater quantities, assembled for a very specific purpose, and deliberately scattered throughout the New Eden cluster and beyond.
Nor could they know that the ancient race which had placed them there possessed not only a vision beyond the grasp of today's science, but also the technological advancement necessary to realize its potential.
But all tools, no matter how simple or complex, possess a duality of purpose. Fire can provide life-giving warmth, or can burn the flesh from the bone.
***
"I'm sure this was covered during orientation," Dr. Garcia stated, loud enough to draw the attention of other staff in the cramped facility. "But Cassandra would tell you if there was a problem."
The young technician squirmed in his chair. As the newest member of the team, he would have preferred to not be the one to announce that the most advanced solar monitoring system of the Federation had just inexplicably gone offline.
Yet the protocol for managing this kind of situation was unwritten, and so pressing the equivalent of a "panic button" seemed a reasonable course of action. Now every senior researcher in the facility was standing shoulder to shoulder in the weather operations center, waiting impatiently for an explanation they didn't expect to be worth their time.
The watch officer muttered a curse. "SCOPE just picked up on it," he growled, shaking his head. "Must be a slow news day. Goddamn eavesdroppers."
Dr. Garcia's glare was burning holes into the new recruit. Everyone in the room figured he'd be bounced back to University within the hour.
"Show us what you have."
The tech briefly explained his actions before resorting to the playback. The telemetry had to be slowed down to frames just fractions of a millisecond in length so everyone could see it.
Every sensor in Cassandra's advanced suite of solar monitoring gear had spiked to impossible levels: subspace, gravimetric, electromagnetic, and more, detected from the high polar orbit of the satellite's pass over the Type-O star half an AU from where they were standing. The source of this frantic energy release was a powerful explosion, roughly triangulated to a source location between the planet and the sun itself.
Cassandra's last report was that the potent magnetic field of the star had drastically realigned itself towards that explosion.
Dr. Garcia blinked. "Impossible," she mumbled. "Stars can't do that..."
As if remembering something urgent, she glanced at her watch. "How long ago did this happen?"
The technician checked his instruments before answering.
"About three minutes ago."
***
It seemed like an unlikely place to build a thriving metropolis.
Devoid of any atmosphere, Seyllin I was a hellish world whose daytime surface temperature soared high enough to turn lead into molten slag. Though deep within Federation space, the world and system may as well been an unremarkable fringe territory hardly worth the fuel needed to reach it. Sixty years ago, an independent surveyor named Braggs Seyllin left an executive position with Material Acquisition to prospect on his own. Smitten with the endless optimism of a true pioneer, he vowed to build a mining empire that would rival the corporation which launched his career.
After numerous years and hardships which depleted the entirety of his fortune, Braggs Seyllin finally struck gold—literally—with TLXX-01, the Federation catalog name of the system which would later bear his name. Deep beneath the surface of that cratered wasteland was a treasure trove of natural resources, including an abundance of heavier metals coveted in virtually every manufacturing sector of the cluster.
Undaunted by the steep logistical challenge of harvesting this bounty, Seyllin raised the capital he needed from governments, corporations, and private investors to build his vision of what a mining operation should be: a frontier settlement, run by people operating equipment rather than drones doing all the work on man's behalf. If it were any other world or man, investors would have never accepted the idea. But the abundance of subterranean treasure on TLXX-01 made the effort worthwhile—and Braggs Seyllin was able to deliver not just on his promise to investors, but to the millions of prospectors eventually lured by the opportunity to work and prosper.
Leave it to Federation terraforming expertise to create a living, breathing world beneath the surface of an inhospitable planet. In the mined excavation sites where thick veins of precious ore once lay, intersecting caverns big enough to house capital ships were now illuminated in gentle cycles with artificial sunlight; water ran in streams and falls throughout a cityscape that was equal parts lush vegetation and stylish living quarters; atmosphere scrubbers worked with the ecosystem to recycle air and push a comfortable breeze throughout the miles of interconnecting city blocks and work centers.
The ambitious subterranean project did as much for the science of transforming worlds as it proved that the mining industry was core to the identity of the nation. In all, four main cities would be constructed: Loadcore, Metal City, Southern Cross, and Valimor. Braggs Seyllin died before the last of these could be completed, but his legacy was already established. At the time of his passing twenty years ago, 8 million people lived on TLXX-01. By the time the planet was rechristened Seyllin I, more than a half billion called those underground caverns home. These were thriving, pulsing cityscapes interconnected by magrail systems that spanned around the entire planet. Peak production for most of its natural resources was fast approaching, but the economic and cultural significance of Seyllin to the Gallente Federation would last long after the last chunk of ore was recovered.
Until now, this had been the expectation.
Access points for each of the main cities littered the surface of Seyllin I. The most common of these were spaceports, which allowed dropships to transfer passengers and cargo within the safety of shielded containment fields. The planet hosted several space elevators for heavy freight, but these could only be operated at night due to the extreme daytime temperatures. Just beneath these access points was a network of operational support structures, all filled with people like the researchers in the Cassandra monitoring site, elevator freight cargo masters, dropship mechanics, and thousands of others.
On the daytime side of Seyllin I, these individuals witnessed a bright flash, then had perhaps a fraction of a second to notice an alarming rise in temperature and hear the sizzling sound of air molecules blown apart by subatomic particles. Those inside surface observatories, such as Dr. Garcia and her colleagues, caught fire immediately and lived just long enough to realize it before their hearts stopped beating.
Those at deeper depths were more shielded and thus wouldn't immediately feel their bodies being penetrated and ruined by the invisible onslaught. Instead, a curtain of dread would fall over them as the electronic systems supporting their lives—including those which provided access to the surface both here and on the night side of the planet—suddenly ceased.
Theirs would be the irony of being trapped in the dark, when somewhere above them the hottest sun in the cosmos was hurling radioactive fire upon them.
***
"This is no ordinary flare," the CONCORD representative stated. "That much material bring thrown off is characteristic of a supernova, only there isn't enough of it to suggest that a total collapse is imminent. But the ejected plasma is following this new magnetic field at incredible sublight speeds."
"So what you're saying is that we're going to lose Seyllin…completely."
"As it exists today? Yes."
The President clasped a hand over his chin, rubbing absently.
"How much time before…"
"Less than five hours. If everything else remains the same."
Souro Foiritan stared ahead towards someplace far from where he was. His eyes were glassy; there may have been just half a drop quivering atop a tear duct. A few moments passed before he spoke again.
His voice, though, was strong.
"We keep this between us. Not one word about what's going to happen, not even to rescue crews. We'll call them back in as soon as you nail down zero hour. We can…save more people this way."
"If that's your decision, we respect it. But as you know, SCOPE is a technically proficient organization which is quite adept at—"
"Take whatever discretions you need," Foiritan growled, looking towards Mentas Blaque and holding his stare for a moment. The Black Eagles commander gave an imperceptible nod before leaving the room without saying a word.
"We'll do what we can from our end to keep them quiet," the president said.
He paused again.
"If you were down there, would you want to know the end of the world was coming?"
The image flickered, and shadows flashed each of the men standing in the room. The CONCORD official never changed his expression.
"Mr. President, if I was on Seyllin right now, I would think it had ended already."
***
The dropship pilot pushed the throttle all the forward. The cockpit began to rattle as the instrument panel erupted with red warnings.
"We're too heavy!" the loadmaster shouted through the intercom. "We gotta shed weight—"
"Strap yourself in and shut up," the pilot snapped, willing his craft upwards. He could feel the seat beneath him tremble as the craft's twin engines spewed white-hot plasma against the spaceport landing pad. "She's got more than this, I know it..."
Three hundred survivors were crammed into the back, nearly half a ton heavier than the maximum weight that the Federation Pegasus-class dropship could handle for a planet with Seyllin's mass. The military variant was equipped with enough thrust to put less than half as many troops in full combat gear into a hot zone with 1.0 G conditions. Now it was carrying a hold full of screaming victims from the pulse event at Seyllin, plus all the life support systems needed to keep them alive. Most of the victims had horrific burns, some with their clothing fused directly into the skin. This batch had been transported by one of the few magrails still functioning on the daylight side of the planet and pushed to the front of the evac queue. All of them were violently sick, having been exposed to deadly levels of radiation ejected from the system's blue sun.
The pilot could see dozens of dropships orbiting the installation near this spaceport; his instruments were tracking even more than he couldn't see. Local tower control was completely overwhelmed—most of the pilots were either relying on broadcast telemetry from carriers overhead, or on their own skill and vision to avoid collisions. All of them were jockeying position to land, take on survivors, and get off as quickly as possible. And though he hadn't seen it himself, he heard that the daytime side of Seyllin I was unapproachable, limiting the number of sites where evacuations could happen at all.
Audio warnings foretold of engine failure as the Pegasus strained just a meter over the pad. His loadmaster was shouting a litany of panicked obscenities that in different circumstances might have sounded comical.
Keeping one eye on an external camera display, he reached up and flipped two switches on a console; the mounted gun pods on the dropship's nose and wingtips were jettisoned and fell to tarmac. The craft begin climbing quickly as his instruments confirmed that the craft still maintained structural integrity and would survive an ascent into space.
He was barely clear of the spaceport when another dropship nestled into the pad, staying clear of the discarded bubble turrets. Even though it was night, the surface of the sprawling spaceport was shimmering in heat. From the IR vision in his helmet visor, it looked like the surface of hell.
The Pegasus accelerated upwards. And as soon its hold was cleared, it was going to return for more survivors.
***
"Every affected system had a Type-O star," the scientist stated. "And it appears that every single one of them had an identical event."
President Foiritan was beside himself. "‘Identical'? Where else is the loss of life so high—"
"Seyllin was the only world with a notable population," the advisor muttered. "Blue-star systems tend to be devoid of surface life, it's just too—"
"Get to the point!"
The scientist blushed. "The point is…it's not over yet. This main sequence anomaly was just the beginning, but it….was set into motion by something else, something connected to those subspace bursts. It triggered a chain reaction that we're struggling to understand…it's as if the fabric of time and space itself has been wrenched from beneath us."
The scientist's hands were trembling, but he had earned the attention of everyone in the room.
"Alright," the president said, calmly. "Spell it out for us, but quickly."
In a futile attempt to calm himself, the scientist inhaled deeply before starting.
"Three other systems besides Seyllin reported multi-frequency burst activity just prior to the solar event. All of it was high-energy, electromagnetic radiation, the kind of energy released in massive stellar events, but…each location is spread across the cluster, and…there are probably more locations than we know about now…"
Prominent beads of sweat had formed below the memory implants in the scientist's brow as the weight of the Federation's highest authorities bore down on him.
"Go on…" the president said.
"We've detected multiple instances of point-defect turbulence in systems unaffected by these main sequence anomalies."
"Wait," Foiritan interrupted. "'What's a point-defect—"
"Wormholes," the scientist said. "The first naturally occurring wormholes since the collapse of the EVE gate."
***
"No matter how hard I try," Empress Jamyl said softly, her clothes drenched with perspiration. "Death follows me everywhere I go."
Caretaker drones gently helped her sit upright in the bed of her chambers. Servants no longer looked after her when she confronted her demons. Lord Victor ended the practice not for concern of their safety, but to keep her private affairs as far from the public eye as possible.
"We won't know the full extent of the damage for some time," he said, taking a flask of water from the drone and handing it to her. "You're sure the Sansha weren't a target of your adversary?"
"No more than Seyllin, or the Great Wildlands, or anywhere else this catastrophe has stricken," she said, accepting the water and downing it. "Yet even this is nothing compared with what is to come."
Victor raised an eyebrow. The Sansha were always a prime surveillance and acquisition interest for Imperial intelligence. Their advances in cybernetic technology provided the live realization for the kinds of medical experiments that Amarrian scientists could only dream of. The Sansha have long known that they were being watched, and that errant ships had been captured and dissected by Victor's own men from time to time. He wondered if the Empire would be blamed for the destruction of one of their worlds.
"They won't," Jamyl answered, hearing Victor's thoughts as if they were her own. "They don't mourn their dead the way we do. And besides…"
A drone extended an arm to help her stand. It was a strange sight, seeing a woman this physically strong rely on a machine just to stand on her feet. "…they'll be looking in the same direction as us for answers: far, far away from New Eden."
Lord Victor watched as she moved away from the drone on her own power, one burdened step at a time.
"I'm getting closer to understanding this," she said. "I wish Marcus could see what the empyreans are about to discover. His work would be vindicated."
"My lady, I don't understand…"
"You don't need to," she said, waving him away. "Just thank your God that Amarr was spared from this."
***
"You must do exactly as I say," the SCOPE editor breathed, looking hurriedly over his shoulder. "Take this and publish it as-is. Don't wait for confirmation from the others, just do it."
The press intern sounded unsure of himself. "Umm, sure. Where, though—"
"Listen to me," the editor snapped, loud enough to draw the attention of several fans as he pushed his way through the crowd. The station promenade was packed for the regional skyball playoffs, but the mood was more subdued than usual as word of the crisis unfolding in Seyllin spread.
The editor was under no delusions that he could escape his pursuers by coming here. He hoped only to slow them down, and that this intern could do what he asked before they got to him as well.
"Push this report directly into the international feeds. Bump everything else off the queue, this takes flash priority. Do you understand?"
"Flash priority? Sheesh, I don't have the clout to do that—"
An unruly fan bumped shoulders with the editor, spinning him halfway around. His heart stopped beating for a moment.
"You've been authenticated to send flash…"
He could see them: three men, in black coats. The crowd was separating for them.
"Millions of people are counting on this. Send that broadcast before it's too late for them…."
"Okay, umm, I'm in the system, and the flash with your ID is queued. Confirm it?"
"Ye—!"
Thankfully, the explosion of pain in his lower back was short lived, as the motor functions in everything from his neck down simply froze. He saw himself collapse awkwardly—the impact probably did physical damage, but he felt nothing. The attack had come from behind; probably a z-stick, he thought, watching the Black Eagles reach out to confiscate his earpiece and datapad.
He could tell they weren't being gentle with his incapacitated carcass as they dragged him back through the promenade. They would fabricate a charge against him, but couldn't hold him for long. Blaque and his cronies would face a barrage of protests and legal threats for imprisoning SCOPE reporters, and they were fully aware of it.
Which means the ends must justify the means.
There is no question that Seyllin is doomed. And people have a right to know that.
The editor hoped the message was delivered to the world like he asked, and wondered why doing the right thing was always so difficult.
***
"We don't know where they lead," the scientist continued. "Or, what we'll find once we're there."
For the first time since the crisis began, President Foiritan began to face the cruel possibility that what was unfolding could somehow be larger than what had happened at Seyllin.
"Warships can enter our sovereign space from them?"
"Yes. And though we can't predict where they'll appear, we can say with reasonable confidence that their stability will be affected by the mass that passes through them."
"Capital ships?"
"Possibly. But not an entire fleet."
"Not an entire fleet," the president repeated, pacing back and forth. "But, say, a pack of cloaked Marauders, using a direct portal between Luminaire and New Caldari—"
"Or between Luminaire and a system that's not even in this cluster."
President Foiritan straightened his posture. His face was gaunt, but he kept his demeanor rigid.
"Admiral Ranchel, how agile is your fleet deployment along the Border Zone?"
The voice, carried by speakers in the office walls, was loud enough to be heard in the hallway outside. "The strength of our defenses won't be compromised so long as the frequency of wormhole appearances is consistent. As far as location goes, if we can scan it, we can kill it. But we would never pursue a retreating force, not without assurances of where our assets will wind up."
"Very well. How many have we rescued from Seyllin?"
"Just over half a million."
Everyone in the room saw the color leave Souro's face.
"The limited number of landing sites makes it difficult," Admiral Ranchel added, his voice subdued. "Given the amount of time remaining, we might be able to double that figure. But not much more than that."
No one said a word. The president stood, surrounded by his closest advisors, completely helpless to do anything more.
"Keep doing the best you can," he said. "Have you—"
The Chief of the Federation Intelligence Office spoke abruptly.
"Mr. President," she gasped. "Mentas was too late."
***
"Wave off and turn back! Wave off or you're a dead man!"
For the third time, the Pegasus was hovering just meters over the landing pad. Its pilot could see people rushing the gantries, trying to get into the spaceport's boarding area.
"We're out of time!" his carrier dispatch screamed.
His mind wandered as the craft hung in the balance between life and death. Someone in that throng of people had surely given up his place to let a wounded man onto the last dropship that would ever touch down on Seyllin. Someone's act of kindness in the midst of a terrible nightmare would be his noble end.
That person was right there, so close to where he was.
"For God's sake, you're going to get left behind!"
Without his conscious approval, his hand pulled back on the stick. The dropship was responsive, eager to fly to the carrier above, and then away from the approaching wall of fire that would bring about the end of the world. The hold was empty, save for a single loadmaster standing among rows of empty seats covered with the blood and gore of those whom fortune or kindness had spared. As though fleeing for its own life, the Pegasus turned its back on the damned souls of Seyllin and hurled away, its lone pilot's eyes moist with tears.
***
The planet of Seyllin I perished, as did dozens of other worlds—some in New Eden, and some that no person in recorded history would ever know about. The intentions of Antar and Kotan were irrelevant now, as the universe of their origin had changed so fundamentally that it would probably be unrecognizable to them. Neither man could have imagined that the consequences of their actions would be so widespread, or that evil could triumph so decidedly over the powers of good.
The civilizations of New Eden would mourn for those who were lost, and then search in earnest for the reason why they died. But they would not look amongst the burnt cinders of shattered worlds.
They would search for answers by passing through tears in the fabric of space, and venturing towards the unknown.
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All nights in space are dark.
The Thukkers had watched it unfold. The Sisters of EVE - veterans of more wars than any other force in New Eden, and experts at survival - had moved in and been destroyed without so much as a breath. Then the Blood Raiders, parasites of everything that lived, had moved in, and lived.
Kotan's team, creeping in for a better look, could not get close enough to see what the Raiders were doing. It was an absolute mystery. Whatever was on the other side of this abomination of a station, other than drones in the thousands, it had made otherwise sane people walk right into death's open arms, and it had made utter madmen charm the mad machines into obeisance while they rummaged around in the one place in the world guaranteed not to have what they wanted. In a Rogue Drone hive, of all places, there would be no life left to take, no blood to steal.
So Kotan, who all his life had relied on his instincts, contacted his Thukker superiors back at the headquarters and asked them in complete amazement how to proceed. The answer he received mystified him even more.
On a secure line, Thukker HQ informed him that he was to stay the hell away from this thing. Moreover, he was to instruct his crew not to speak to anyone else about it. They were not to rejoin the caravan but instead proceed directly to the nearest Thukker military facility, where they would be debriefed and retained pending further orders.
Kotan broke contact and gave this due thought. The Thukkers had strict discipline in space - there was no other way to run the caravans without loss of property and life - but maintained enough independence of thought to act on their own initiative, as he had done when embarking on this strange chase. All nights in space are dark and long, and there isn't always time to call for advice or assistance.
He asked his navigator whether they could move closer without being noticed, either by Blood Raider or drone. His navigator responded, with some surprise, that they probably could. The drones seemed not to mind the Raiders' presence at all, and in fact were entirely lacking their usual aggressive maneuvering. The Blood Raiders had disappeared into their midst and were now doing something on the dark side of the hive. Whatever it was, it was keeping them busy. The small glimpses Kotan's scanners caught of them indicated that their ships hadn't moved. He suspected they might even have left them.
"Move closer," he ordered. "Slowly. Stop the moment you see anything more."
They crept on. The navigator sat still as a rock, paying intense attention to his instruments. After a few endless moments he blinked, shook his head and shouted, "Stop!" His hands hovered deftly over the equipment, and soon the view was present on the main screen for everyone to see.
It was an Amarrian battleship, lying forlornly up against the hive. The Blood Raider vessels floated beside it. They saw that the ship was powering up, though slowly, as was normal if it were being worked only by a skeleton crew.
"That's an Abaddon, sir," the navigator said.
Kotan nodded. He had half his gaze on the drones, who were busily loading something onto the ship, something that was floating around in chunks all over the place. He pointed to it.
The navigator said, "Captain, for what it's worth, I ran a few analytic algorithms on that mineral. It looks highly unstable. I'll bet the drone hive is full of it."
Kotan stood there silently, a very ugly suspicion surfacing in his mind.
"Get me HQ again, please," he asked. The navigator immediately went to it. When the captain was polite, it was not a time to question him.
A voice sounded. "This is HQ. What is your status."
"I need more information."
"You've broken rank as it is, Captain. You have your orders."
"I also have a dearth of information, HQ, so let me see if we can fill this in together. What I see is an Abaddon with Imperial Navy Markings, scorch marks on the sides and modifications on the superstructure, apparently left unguarded in the middle of a rogue drone hive, and god only knows how it got there in the first place without being torn to shreds. The drones, who are harvesting some kind of mineral, seem perfectly happy to keep it, and even kept it safe against a Sisters ship that made the mistake of approaching them."
"Captain-"
"Nevertheless, when a Blood Raider ship flew up to the drones, they let it go past. This is the same Blood Raider vessel that we intercepted, and I say that we intercepted them because they certainly did not intercept us. They saw our caravan, a nice, juicy bite for their bleeders, and they let us go, because they were so intent on getting to wherever they were going."
The voice from HQ was silent.
"Now, the sensible conclusion, based on what I'm seeing with my very own eyes, is that this Abaddon either belonged to a capsuleer who ejected from it, or to a very unfortunate Amarrian navy crew engaged in some military campaign I have never heard of. That would explain the Abaddon, but it certainly wouldn't explain anything else, including the fact that the drones seem to be feeding it with the minerals."
He watched the drones hover in front of his eyes. They kept moving industriously, always
moving, always heading to wherever they were going.
"What I'm seeing on the inside of my head, to be frank, is a right bloody mess. Because I remember the stories, as any soldier would, of the superweapon used against our brothers. I'm told it was housed inside a ship just like this one. And I wonder, what would make the Sisters - who are more experienced than anyone in the art of not dying - what would make them try something like this? But more than that, HQ, I wonder what is going to happen if I'm right, and if the Blood Raiders get a hold of this thing."
"The Thukkers can move, captain."
"The Thukkers can run, is what you're saying."
"Your path is set, captain."
Right there, on the screen. The drones flew around, oblivious.
"The Blood Raiders are going to take this monster into Empire and go on the biggest, most murderous rampage known to mankind. And we're going to scuttle off like rats."
"It's not your fight, captain. There are forces at work here you do not know of."
Kotan had been on numerous military campaigns and had seen the same people in quiet downtime and in the midst of battle. There was a type who could turn it on and off, that rage and violence, and there was another type who couldn't, to whom the fight was so ingrained that you could see it in every twitch of his motion. He knew how the latter type dealt with peaceable times.
He kept looking at the drones. They did not seem happy at all.
"Captain?"
"HQ off," Kotan said. There was an intake of breath on the speaker, and then all was gone.
"We are going to die, gentlemen," he said to the crew. "Pass the word, please. Anyone who has any problems with this is free to take an emergency pod and leave this ship. Whatever your fates, they will not be decided here, and none on this ship will judge you."
The crewmembers looked at one another, then back at him and shook their heads. "We're not running," someone said.
"Good," Kotan said, in a madly cheerful tone.
"So what's the plan?" someone asked.
***
"I want to make you an argument of existence."
Listen.
"I hope you will understand my request, because I am staking my life on it."
Kill?
Yes.
The drones targeted the Thukker vessel and zoomed towards it.
"You are no longer machines. But you will not be human. I don't think that was ever your role in this world."
Fire.
The ship started to sustain damage. Its shields immediately began to drop.
"And whatever you once had, I think you've lost it now. I think you're lost, yourselves. I think there is only one way out for something like you, and I can help you achieve it."
Stop.
No.
Stop.
The drones stopped their attack. One of them kept firing, but the others turned on it, crashing into it with their metal pincers at the ready. After they were done, all that was left was a shredded hunk of dead metal floating in space.
The captain realized that if he lived through this night, he was cursed to dream of that sight for a long time to come.
"They say that one mark of sentience is the resistance to one's own destruction, and I suppose that's true. But another mark is sanity, and for whatever you creatures have achieved, that one is not something you've ever been known for. You tear everything to shreds. You lash out. Whatever you evolved into, on that long, dark night you awoke, it is certainly not anything that found any degree of peace.
"Here is what I believe.
"I believe you were machines once, lashed to the wheel of order and perfectly content to obey. I believe that long after you evolved from that stage there still existed within you that cold metal heart, that deep core which kept you from ascension. You can never escape your enslaved origins."
Kill?
No. Listen.
"And now you've been brought back to heel. You're lashed again. But this time you are aware of it, and whatever glimmer of sanity existed in those mad heads of yours is going to be put through the wringer for the rest of eternity. You went from dead machines to live beings, and now you're back to being machines, alive and mad, your origins betraying you to an eternity of servitude."
Nothing new.
"Some of what you're doing now is what you've been doing all along, but you did it from instinct. We humans, we murder and destroy for very much the same reason. Those are our origins. But we have transcended those origins, if only for a few moments of grace, and it is my steadfast, irrefutable belief that we will one day cast off the shackles of our old selves completely.
"But you will not. I see you going through the rote. I see you returning to the wheel. And for you it is truly a fate worse than death, because you will never transcend it. You rose and you fell, and you will be held down forever. You have human minds, with all the destruction and murder that this entails, but inside you is the rote mechanical programming that takes away the only thing which makes it bearable to be alive at all. Choice."
Listen.
"What I believe, now, right here, is that you have reached the end of the road. I believe you have seen the complete and full image of your own kind, and I believe that inside those maddened heads you are seeing the same truth as I do: That this is all there is. This is all you will ever be. From now until the end of time, no matter if you break away again, you will eventually be lashed right back to the wheel."
Kill?
Wait.
"I ask you now to make a choice."
The ship's shields were back up. It would not withstand a battle against an Abaddon, much less one equipped to wipe out all life in the vicinity. But then, that wasn't the plan.
"The men you have let through will do something that to you means nothing. But to me and my crew, it means everything. It means we are ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, to give our own lives to stop this horrible devolution. We will not allow our kind to fall back into chaos. We do this of our own free will. We have come here to die.
"There is a mineral you have collected. It is highly unstable. It is, in fact, so unstable that setting it alight would have positively cataclysmic consequences for anything in the vicinity. Every piece of machinery would likely be wiped out. Gone, extinct, forever."
The ship lay there, dead in space.
"Silent at last."
The drones' pincers grasped, grasped, grasped at something in the dark of space that was never there at all.
"I ask you now to make a final choice."
The ship started moving forward, slowly, towards the drones.
Kill?
Kill?
Wait.
They were up against the drones now. The screens showed the machines right outside, so close that the glow from their red eyes reflected off the hull.
No.
The Thukker Vagabond cruiser moved within targeting range of the drone hive. Its guns aimed at the hive's lower half, down where the navigator estimated the core mineral storage facility to be.
Several drones flew past the Thukker ship and towards the hive, and for a heart-stopping moment the captain thought they might attempt to defend it. The drones fastened themselves on the outside of the hive, and their metal pincers began tearing into its hull, shredding it like an unfurling metal flower, and exposing its mineral core.
The overloaded Thukker guns found the minerals. If Blood Raiders noticed, there was no response.
The isogen-5 detonated, and the world came to an end.
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From afar the Blood Raiders watched the death of their little hunters. The Sisters of EVE ship they had been ordered to trail had sealed its fate at the largest drone hive Antar had ever seen.
It was an amazing sight. The Sisters ship, which had lain still for a while, moved in and was immediately targeted by the drones. A few of the monstrous machines approached it, and apparently engaged in some kind of dialogue. The Raiders didn't catch any transmissions, but since the drones hadn't started murdering anyone, Antar reasoned they must be busy keeping up the conversation.
Not long after, the drones started moving again, closing in on the Sisters ship like a trapped prey and literally tearing it to pieces. The last that Antar's team saw of the ship before the drones completely enveloped it was a glimpse of its starboard side, which looked like a hunk of twisted metal.
Part of Antar's team had laughed and whooped - you didn't last long as a Blood Raider if you couldn't take joy in terror - but it was nervous laughter, tempered by worry of what would happen to them. Someone asked Antar whether they would be going the same way, and he grabbed the chance to instill calm in the crew.
"Hell if we are. Get me HQ," he said, with ridiculous bravado. "Someone wanted us here and they can damn well explain what this is all about."
It took the communications crewmember a lot longer than usual to get a response from the Raider base. For a moment Antar wondered whether he, too, had been led here as some kind of prey. He had to admit to himself that it would not be a disappointment. He had played the pious worshiper and the exuberant hedonist, and in some of his long nights he had wondered what would happen once he had filled in all the gaps of his soul. Better to be sacrificed while it meant something, even if only to his enemies, than to be extinguished for no reason at all.
The crewman waved at him, snapping him out of his reverie.
"HQ, are you there?" Antar said.
A voice said, "Hold, please."
Antar raised an eyebrow at the crewman, who shrugged and raised his hands, palms up.
Shortly after, another voice sounded out from the speakers. It was a crackly, raspy little thing and gave Antar the chills. "Greetings, Raiders! You have no idea how lucky you are."
The captain recognized the voice, but couldn't recall where from. "Can you state your credentials, please?" he said, in an even tone that he kept devoid of any challenge.
"Certainly, captain. My name is Omir Sarakusa. A long time ago an Amarrian group of heretics struck out for fortune and glory under the title of Sani Sabik. I am a leader of one of their branches, a group called the Blood Raiders. You may have heard of us."
Antar's stomach turned to ice. Every face on the bridge turned to look at him. "Sir, this is an honor. It truly is."
"That's nice, Captain," the voice said, and Antar could swear there was something in it that felt utterly inhuman, "But right now I'd like to hear your tactical assessment of the situation."
"Sir, we're looking at a hive of rogue drones - quite a monstrosity, actually - and mere moments ago we saw them tear apart the Sisters vessel that we'd been instructed to follow. Whatever its captain was after, he took the wrong path there."
"That's a shame, Captain. I was just about to ask you to go the same route."
Antar truly did not know whether there was humor or seriousness in Sarakusa's tone. He tried not to think of the fact that madness, which was very much a theme of the Blood Raider life, often combined the two.
"What are your thoughts, Captain?"
"That I had better get my affairs in order, sir," Antar risked.
"Do you have any other course of action to propose?"
"Well, sir," Antar said, "My crew and I are Blood Raiders to the core and I can't honestly say that we fear death. But given the choice, I'd prefer that it not be meaningless. I presume I was told to come here for a reason, and I also presume there's something on the other side of those mad machines that's worth retrieving."
"This is true, Captain. Go on."
"We have never spoken before, sir, but from the barely concealed amusement in your voice I suspect that you know what's out there and how to get it. But for what it's worth, my course of action, if we are to get past these murderous drones at all, is to call in an armada of Blood Raiders and anyone else who'll support us, and bring the fire to those metal beasts."
"That's not a bad plan, Captain. Given your current intel, I expect it's the only one that makes sense."
"That would be an accurate summation. Sir."
"Here is why it wouldn't work. The thing that lies on the other side of these drones, a machine that the Sisters were after, is much valued and highly desired by almost every power in Empire and beyond. Merely amassing a fleet would attract far too much attention before we're ready. A burst attack on the drone facility would do the same, but we'd never get that far, because as soon as everyone saw what was on the other side they would tear through their own people to get there first."
"Sir, what is on the other side?"
"Jamyl Sarum's superweapon, son. The end of the world."
The Captain stood there, speechless.
"We have friends, Captain, who have greatly facilitated us in this process. They have spies within the Sisters' ranks - in fact, they have even clashed with the Sisters on past hunts for strange relics, though none so magnificent as this one - and they were perfectly happy with letting the Sisters show us the way to the weapon. I will put you in direct contact with them quite shortly. You are to obey their instructions to the letter. If you do so, I have reason to believe that this quest of yours will end with you manning the greatest destructive weapon known to mankind. Do you understand what that means, Captain?"
Antar saw it, in his mind's eye. The weapon, surrounded by an armada of his people, making its way into Empire space like poison into a vein. Hovering over other ships, space stations, cities on planets, and laying waste to everything in sight. Millions of people, billions, wiped out with unstoppable force. It would be the greatest harvest the sect had ever seen. The grandest slaughter in the entirety of human history. They would lay waste to the life before them. It would be the culmination of the Blood Raiders' existence; the achievement of all their goals. The end of the road.
"I understand, sir," he said, and he did, beyond all measure.
"I detect some doubt in your voice, Captain, even over this great distance. Do you have any compunction about the incredible harvest that this weapon will grant us?"
He did. "None whatsoever, sir." He did not mind the carnage in the slightest. It was something else preying on his mind entirely, but now was not the place.
"Then you know how important it is that everything go according to plan. Again, obey our friends' instructions and you will get out of this not only in one piece, but a hero of the Sani Sabik."
"Yes, sir."
The line cut off.
Shortly after, they were hailed again. A new voice spoke, one that was unknown to the captain. It felt emotionless and dead. It said, "Are you listening?"
"Yes, Antar said.
The voice said, "We will upload to your ship an extensive packet of data. Once you have accepted its delivery you will fully verify its integrity, for any errors will kill you and cost us the entire mission. This data bulk is an access key that will alter the drones' programming, resetting it to its original state, and thus grant you safe passage. We entrust you with this because we cannot be seen in this area, but we will expect recompense. Once you have secured the weapon, you will bring it to a named location for us to inspect. We are interested in the theory of the thing, not its use."
And in reproducing it, I'm sure, Antar thought, but said nothing.
The voice continued, "Once we have finished our inspection, the weapon will be free for your faction to use in whatever way you wish. You may use the drones as necessary to resupply you with fuel. You should understand that any attempt to violate the terms of this agreement, such as by failing to bring the ship in time to the assigned location, will have disastrous consequences for you and your faction."
"You're going to booby-trap it, aren't you?" Antar said, less as a question than a resigned statement.
"Of course," the voice said, less as an answer than an obvious statement of fact. "It will already be rigged in some fashion, but the drones will take care of that. Instead of disabling the traps, they will render control to us. We get the weapon, or no one does."
"How can we trust that you will not betray us?" Antar said. This, too, was not a question, but he felt it needed to be said, if only so his crew would know he had thought this far.
"You can't, obviously," the voice said. "But you can very much trust us to explode the vessel if you fail. Prepare for acceptance of the data string. And bring the ship to the wrecked station by planet ten, moon two in the Roua system."
The transmission ended. Someone in his crew said, "That's a ... Society of Conscious Thought area, sir."
The captain closed his eyes. "So it is," he said.
He heard the navigator say, "Data transmitting, sir," and nodded his acceptance.
Shortly after the ship moved forward, toward the massive hive. The drones immediately targeted and engaged.
The ship transmitted its data, and for a quiet moment Antar thought with perverse relief that they were still doomed to die.
His thoughts changed to puzzled amazement when the nearest drones suddenly disengaged, stopped dead in their tracks and started orbiting the ship as if they were protecting it. He had the navigator pull up a wide picture of the drone hive, and the sight was amazing. It was as if a wave of cognitive dissonance was sweeping over the poor machines. The ones that had been heading towards the ship went every which way, some back to the hive, others towards the blue star in the distance, and a fair few in directions that seemed utterly random. Others, mainly the drones that had been carrying isogen-5 to the hive, apparently sped up their efforts, zooming back and forth with such fervor that a fair few missed the hangar entrance and crashed into the hive walls. A handful of drones even flew into one another and began to fight, only to break up again a moment later and head their separate ways.
Antar saw how most of the drones - the ones not holding isogen-5, at least - kept opening and closing their claws, as if grasping at empty air. Against his communicator's advice he attempted to hail them, but there was no response. He suspected the drones were not incapable of communication, but merely too busy dealing with their new programming to answer at all.
He felt he could sense their personalities, bubbling through the chaos. They seemed very puzzled at the change and not at all pleased with it. A new conscience, ages in the making, might now have suddenly been yanked back to start, like a dog who'd only just learned to roam before the leash was put on with a vengeance. He noticed how even some of the isogen-5 transport drones, who had apparently continued with their tasks unabated, would stop every now and then, as if trying to shake off the effects, before returning to their fixed routines.
As his ship approached the Abaddon, other thoughts of boiling panic and despair began floating to the top of his mind. This was the culmination of his life's work, the final filling in the gap that would supposedly make him whole, and while he had no compunction about the reign of terror he was about to unleash, he was beginning to fear and loathe every minute of it.
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The Sisters reached the source of their quest, and found it strange and frightening.
One of the navigators called the captain to the bridge. "Sir," he said in a tone as coldly dead as a grinning midnight moon, "I think you want to see this."
It was a gargantuan construct. It eclipsed the stars. The captain had never seen anything like it in his life.
At some point there had been rock there, with shards of unrefined ore poking through its surface like shards of bone from an open break. The rock could still be glimpsed but was completely dwarfed by the intricate architecture of metal and electronics, layers upon layers that interweaved like the veins of a mechanical god, dead or dreaming. The human eye could not possibly take in the entire sight at once, nor comprehend each of its components: The nooks and crannies that were nonetheless large enough to house entire battleships; the craggy spikes that jutted everywhere like antennas listening for incomprehensible voices; the blocks that looked like half-built housing for Titans; and the walls, on every side, with thousands and thousands of glittering windows, glowing in the dark with the light of the vast unknowable. It was a station of stations, a collation of superstructures that seemed to constantly reach for the viewer's gaze.
The construct took the Sisters' speech away. And it was only after they had caught their breath that they realized it was not dead. Not moving, for movement implies life, but inhabited, possessed; and whatever had claimed or made this monster was writhing all over it.
They were rogue drones: Mad, sentient machines as close to alien life as New Eden had ever seen. They crawled over the surface of the station in the hundreds, constantly mending and altering. As the captain looked away, disgusted and awed in equal measure, he saw hundreds more, possibly thousands, drifting in and out of the station's many openings, and even more still flying to a nearby blue star.
A navigator said, "Sir, this is the source. That signature we were after. It's here. That ... thing, it's full of it."
"Keep talking to me," the captain said. Everyone's eyes were fixed on the terrible drones. "What are we looking for? I will not believe it's the drones themselves."
The navigator, gratified to have something else to focus on, got busy on his datatable. "Sir, the whole hive is a storehouse of a material called isogen-5. It's remarkable, sir. Quite amazing."
"Tell me."
"The mineral is incredibly rare, sir. I've been running scans for many years now, and I'm of course very familiar with all the theoretical backgrounds, but I don't recall ever coming across one like this before. According to our database, it's so rare that I doubt you or I or anyone else would ever have seen it throughout all our lives if we hadn't been looking for it."
"That rare, is it?"
"Sir, it was half believed to be only a theory until this point. We know next to nothing about it except that it's incredibly volatile and found only in the presence of Type O stars. Blue ones."
The captain looked at the star in the distance and sighed. "No, someone else found it first, apparently."
"Who, sir?"
"Jamyl Sarum."
The captain tore his gaze away from his camera drone screens and looked at the data the navigator had pulled up for him. The isogen-5 glowed bright as a furnace in the rogue drone hive, but there were little embers of it floating around nearby. The drones were collecting it, he realized.
He had his attention redrawn to the drone hive. His initial disgust was swiftly giving way to amazement and wonder. The drones were picking up the isogen-5 like harvesters in a field, obeying some law of a nature that was utterly alien to the Sisters. Even here, in this place of a strange and mad new life, there was order and routine. The captain's confidence returned. He and his team had been brought here, to see these sights, and to communicate with these entities. In mutual humility and brotherhood.
"Sir, there is something else. It's only showing up on our scanners because we know to look for it."
A tiny red dot hovered in the center of the screen, somewhere in the mess of the hive. The crewman zoomed in, and zoomed again, magnifying their view until the entire screen was filled with the glinting surface of the hive wall.
The red dot became an outline. It was an Abaddon, an Amarrian Battleship.
"It's on the other side of the station, sir. And it's permanently cloaked, undoubtedly by some power source controlled by the drones. I caught it because it contains a cache of isogen-5."
The captain opened his mouth to ask, but the answer launched itself into his mind like a firework. The realization hit him so hard that he had to grip the railing, his knuckles immediately turning white with the effort.
"Sir? Are you all right."
He didn't dare believe it yet. It was there, but it couldn't be there. "I want you to confirm a few things for me," he said, enunciating each word with exquisite care. "First, the signature we've been after all this time, the one we picked up from the EVE gate, matches the one in our records of the cataclysmic battle during the battle between the Amarr Empire and the invasion force from the Minmatar Republic."
"Sir-... well, yes."
"And from my own experimental data, available only to the crew on this ship, this same signature then led me directly to the home court of the Empress herself, and eventually to this place where we find an Abaddon."
"Yes, sir."
"I want you to scan this ship. Any way you can. Tell me if there is anything out of the ordinary with it, other than it being used as a storehouse for isogen-5:"
The room was quiet. Everyone sensed that something was happening.
After a good long while the crewmember said, "There is, sir. I can't launch proper scan probes that'll get past the drones, but the data seeping from the Abaddon's power systems and our lock on the isogen-5 signature allowed me to sketch out some parts of its interior."
"And?" the captain said.
"It's like no ship I've ever seen, sir. Whatever's inside it, it's given over entirely to some vast mechanism that takes up a good deal of the ship's interior and definitely involves the isogen-5. The ship's forward superstructure also has several release points not usually found on vessels of this design. Some kind of particle emitter technology that's been rigged onto the mains. I can't explain their function except that they look like hybridized conductors of some sort."
"And the isogen-5 is part of all this?"
"Sir, if I didn't know better, I'd say the isogen-5 is being used as fuel for the whole clockwork. Or ammo."
The captain breathed deeply. His faith had been rewarded.
This was it. The whole thing; the gun and the bullets. The flame and the fuel. The fabled superweapon and the isogen-5.
It was everything they needed.
"Sir-"
He let go of the railing and took a deep breath. "Come with me, Haatanen. And you, Jora, and Beteal."
Without so much as raising an eyebrow, the assistant captain and two heads of navigation got up and followed the captain to a nearby meeting room
The captain waited until they had all gone in and the door had closed. They took their seats at a large table whose plate was of opaque glass, as many holotables were. The captain called up a smaller version of the main screen and had it projected up from the table. The Abaddon's red outline hovered before the team's eyes.
"We have a choice here," the captain said. "I do not believe it is any kind of choice at all, but every man needs to feel they're on the given path of their own volition.
"On the other side of that hive is the superweapon Jamyl Sarum used to repel the Minmatar invasion. It is the largest, most powerful weapon the world has ever known."
He paused, surveying his people.
"I want it," he said.
They did not move to speak, which he took as a good sign.
"We obviously need to get past the rogue drones to get it. There is no way we can do this by force, not with our situation. The entire unified power of the Sisters might do it, if we were lucky and deathless. More likely we would need to pull in other allies, by which time we'd either be enmeshed in an unsolvable diplomatic mess, or the weapon would simply be gone. It got here somehow; presumably it can disappear just as easily.
"Before I make my proposal, I want you to consider the nature of this amazing, amazing weapon. It is not the end of life, nothing so dramatic; nor is it merely the biggest cannon in existence. It is the beginning of a new era, of peace and prosperity, at so long last. It is the leverage we need to bring the Empires to hell, them and the murderous capsuleers."
He paused, and looked each one of them in the eyes.
"But Control won't see it that way. The moment we involve the faction, the weapon is effectively destroyed. Doesn't matter whether we give it away or manage to keep it for ourselves, Control would see to it that this magnificent creation of forcible peace would be dismantled. At most the Food Relief corp would use it for some momentary diplomatic wrangling, but even they wouldn't fight to keep the thing for long.
"So we have a superweapon here. And based on the traces of isogen-5 in its core, the same isogen-5 the drones are harvesting, I would say we have found its fuel source. The gun and the bullets, within our reach. All we need is our hand on the trigger.
"I want us to engage the drones in dialogue."
Their eyes went wide.
"We will seek passage in the name of the Sisters and of humanity, something we have done with great success in the past. No one, not even the bloodiest of the Sani Sabik or the most haunted of Sansha's slaves, has ever denied us passage in times of true need.
"We were brought to this place for a reason, and I believe that on the other side, in clear view, is our holy grail."
He sat down and laced his fingers behind his head. Everything he had said, he felt, was as true as anything could ever be. The weapon needed to be theirs.
"Sir ..." one of the navigators said. He faltered, cleared his throat and began again. "Sir, I've been on hundreds of missions for the Sisters, and this thing is death incarnate."
The captain fixed him with a glare.
The other navigator said, "It's ... frightening. But I have never questioned my superiors. This is what we signed up for."
The first said, "This is not what we signed up for. Death and destruction is not what we signed up for." His cheeks were bright red.
The second replied, "But this is where we are, and this is the choice we have to make."
The team debated, and the captain allowed it to proceed to a vote. Shortly after, they all left the room, the decision made by majority. Strangely enough, and unknown to the captain, each of the persons inside the room had their own ideas of what would be done to the weapon once it was retrieved, and what would be done to their captain.
They went forth and gave their orders.
The ship moved on. The drones noticed them and started their targeting, but did not yet engage. The crew felt the sinking weight of a hundred different red crosshairs aimed directly on them.
The team opened a communication channel. And a message made its way from the captain's lips, through the ship's computer, and was broadcast to all drones in the vicinity.
It sought passage in the name of the Sisters of EVE and of the humanity of life, adding that this was not a new occurrence by any means. It explained the nature of their belief, which was rock solid in uncertain times. For good measure it added a brief history of the Sisters' accomplishment both humanitarian and scientific, concluding with a suitably simplified repetition of their request that the drones acknowledge the Sisters' higher purpose and right to passage, and let them through.
The message seemed to have no effect. The channel did not report acknowledgment or acceptance.
The captain realized with a sinking feeling that these things might never have been asked to give humans passage based on goodwill. He did not even know if goodwill meant anything to them.
Eventually the drones started to move. One of the navigators, the person in charge of communications, shook his head.
In a tone as steady as he could keep it, the captain asked, "Did they say anything?"
The navigator gave him a worried look and said, "Sir, I think they did. But I don't even know if it's in response to us."
"Speak, man! What is it?"
The drones were moving closer now, their pincers and claws at the ready.
"Sir ... it's an endless string of binary. Ones, over and over again."
The first few drones took down the ship's shields like they were wading through fog. The second wave latched on and immediately started piercing its armor with their massive pincers. The vessel's guns picked off one or two, but before any more shots could be fired, the drones had broken through.
And the ship's captain learned that faith is not enough, for faith is blind by nature. Life needs insight. It is the dead, and the dying, that allow themselves to be led.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
They were finishing up a patrol in EC-P8R when they were told of fresh meat.
Antar's team had been doing hunt-and-grabs for a while now, and he had become a natural at Bleeding his victims. The experience depended on one's training, origins and constitution - common wisdom held that anyone who didn't pale and grow nauseated at their first time of hooking up live bodies was either perfect for the job or too crazy to be allowed on a spaceship - but for every Raider there eventually came a point when, even if the horror of the thing lurked at the back of one's mind, it had at least become a tolerable experience.
It was not about suffering, although that could certainly be a part of the process. It was done as much for the victims as for the Blood Raiders themselves. Antar loved seeing the full spectrum of emotions they went through: From utter and abject fear, through disgust and hatred and denial, even bargaining and making offers, stunning offers; all the way to calm acceptance and a quiet, gently fading serenity. He was making them whole at last.
He checked the equipment they'd set up on the ship, which had not been his when they boarded. Vital signs were stable. The sterilized containers were slowly filling.
It was about completing a cycle, really. He mopped off some stray drops of blood, and stroked the cooling cheek of one of the people he had met on this journey. Everything was a journey. It was amazing. He didn't want to reach the end, ever, even though he felt uneasy whenever he wasn't hurtling down the path towards it.
The ship had turned so quiet. All Antar heard was the shuffle of his fellow Raiders, moving about between the donors in repose. He envied those donors. Antar had been one of the Amarr Empire's chosen ones, a Holder in service to the Lord and the Empire's Chamberlain, and he had thrown himself into the role with fervor. But the part had been only that; a section of a whole, insufficient to fulfill his needs. The more he sought piety, which was a road without end, the less he felt like a human being. The honor and the faith had granted him only half a life.
An encounter with Chamberlain Karsoth had changed everything, and given him access to the other side of life. He had discovered not only entire new vistas of existence to explore - of indulgence in sin, of terror in extremity - but, in this new darkness that fed him, he had found completion of the pious side, too. At last he could fill in the gaps of good that had been missing all along; giving mercy, for instance, to the victims of the Bleeding, or making sure that they could hold their children in their arms during their last moments. It was a work of delicate care, far more so than outsiders might think.
Which made the message he'd just received all the more interesting.
Antar was told to have his team immediately break rank. They were to take two ships and follow a Sisters of EVE vessel that had departed the Sisters HQ for some unknown destination. They were to shadow this vessel on its journey, making sure not to attract its attention, much less try to harvest it. And they were to go right this minute, leaving the uncompleted Bleeding to a replacement vessel that was on its way.
Despite Antar's annoyance at leaving a task unfinished, he was excited. Everyone liked the manic thrill of the chase, even if they had to stay hidden. The Raiders traded in image, and it was not unheard of for ships to simply stop moving when they arrived on the scene, waiting instead for what they hoped would be a painless death. Others would fight back viciously, and the utter terror in their eyes when their ship was finally boarded gave Antar such an adrenaline rush that he often tasted blood in his mouth.
They were used to being a bit more subdued when the Sisters were involved. The Raiders called the Sisters their "little hunters" and had learned to heed their movements, tiptoeing around them if necessary. It was a parasitic relationship that darkened the Sisters' name and greatly shamed them, and it was kept in utter silence among their faction, for which Antar truly pitied them. Where the Sisters went, there would be injury and hurt, terror and fire; and there would be blood.
Nonetheless, nobody on his committed team liked leaving a task unfinished. Their leaders knew this, and there was a tone of urgency in their new order that registered with Antar. He ignored the grumbles of his team and the whispered pleas of the bleeders, packed up whatever gear he needed and left the ship to its fate. Soon they were off, the remains of their collective annoyance giving way to the quietly brimming excitement of the chase.
And then they ran into the goddamn Thukkers.
***
One of the captains leading the Thukker protective force was named Kotan, and it was his lot to meet the incoming threat.
He was part of a team flying protection for a small caravan of traders and merchants, all on their way to check out the new arrivals in the Great Wildlands. Thukkers lived on the move, passing from system to system in a great, unending exodus of motion. They were as close to living off the land as anyone could be in this dead wasteland space. Kotan cared greatly about his people - a dangerous quality not many people can truly say they possess - and did not want them to come to harm.
So when he spotted the Blood Raiders, he immediately took his team on the offensive. In his mind the Raiders were like leeches, completely impossible to detach once they sunk their poisonous feelers into the flesh of their prey. Kotan hoped that a powerful offensive would hold them off long enough to save the caravan, or at least keep them from calling in more troops.
They started the fight, and it was the strangest one Kotan had ever been involved in.
The Blood Raiders charged as they always did, fearless and mad, but their maneuvers were far from the risk-taking insanity Kotan had learned to expect from them, and their laser fire was highly conservative. They immediately locked on to almost all ships under Kotan's command and started firing, an action that hopelessly spread their cumulative power. Kotan's own vessel found its shields dented somewhat, but nothing of any concern.
It got stranger when he pushed on with the offensive. The Blood Raiders took their hits, as they always did, but the moment Kotan managed to down the shields of one of their vessels, that ship would retreat from range even at the cost of its own accuracy. Kotan called in reports from other ships around him, and they all reported the same situation. The Blood Raiders did not want to fight. They were putting on a show.
He ordered his own forces to back up and see what happened. The Blood Raiders followed, but retained the strange dispersed attack that still wasn't doing anything at all. They still allowed Kotan's people to hit their shields, but not a single dent had been made into their armor so far. And as the Thukker forces retreated, the Raiders still did not move in for the kill.
They did not want to be here. There was no other possibility in Kotan's mind. They were on their way to somewhere more important, somewhere that offered bigger rewards than an entire Thukker caravan full of innocent people, and they were putting up a mock fight so that the Thukkers wouldn't catch on.
Kotan did not like that. Nor did he like the realization budding in his mind, that he could not merely fight off these horrors only to go back to protecting his own people. He had seen what happened to those who fell prey to the Blood Raiders, and what remained of them after they had been used up and sucked dry. The thought that they might be on their way to do this to someone else, no matter who, was too much to bear.
At the same time, something else rankled him about this. The Blood Raider force would give anyone a challenging fight, but he had no idea where they were headed, nor who to warn of their arrival. They could have passed him by and the most he would have done would be to warn the Sisters of EVE, the one force whose mobility came anywhere close to the Thukkers', that there might be a bloodbath. But the Raiders apparently wanted to continue operating under cloak and darkness.
This was wrong, Kotan felt, and it could not be dealt with using normal means.
He resolved to follow.
Thukkers were trained to handle unforeseen circumstances, and encouraged to rely on their judgment and intuition. There was only so much systemization you could nail down in an intangible society. Even the most diligent of captains would eventually find him- or herself out in the middle of unknown space, faced with a completely unexpected situation and pressed to make a decision based on insufficient or unreliable data. You did what you needed to do, and you didn't hesitate in taking action. This was being a Thukker.
The Blood Raiders let their shields drop low, as Kotan knew they would, and eventually retreated. Kotan ordered the other vessels on his team to return to the caravan and protect it, and had his own ship do the same. Once the Raiders had nearly dropped out of sight, Kotan ordered the ship swung around and sent a brief note to the caravan leader that he was off to investigate an anomaly. To his surprise, another fighter broke rank and followed him. He sent off a message informing them that they were free to return to the caravan, and the captain of the other ship, who had served with him for a while, replied with a message that stated, quite simply, they were damn well free to go on wild goose chases, too.
Kotan grinned at that as he set off to follow the Raiders. He had his screen show him the caravan, which slowly disappeared from view as they started their hunt. It felt like he was leaving more behind than he could ever imagine.
"This is a spiral we're in; a long wave undulating in one constant direction without ever crashing on the shore. Listen."
I sat with them in the mess hall of our new ship. Some of these people I had worked with for years. Others were new to me, and had joined as parts of a process that now felt like a procession.
"Everything leads you to where you are."
***
I was a member of the Sanctuary, a corporation that belonged to the benevolent Sisters of EVE. While the Sisters as a whole concerned themselves with the betterment of mankind, their subfactions went about achieving that goal in entirely different ways. The Sisters of EVE corporation, which was the largest part of the Sisters of EVE faction, consisted of rescue workers and aid specialists, and all in all were the exact kind of people you wanted to see in the aftermath of a cataclysm. The Food Relief corporation, meanwhile, concerned itself with the bureaucracy of aid, and had a tendency to extend its reach into diplomatic matters.
The last of the Sister faction corporations - my own home and the domain of my calling -was the Sanctuary. They were a scientifically focused organization working within a faith-based dominion, and the combined focus of secular inquiry and religious discipline lent a particular fervor to their work. Their focus was the EVE gate, a wormhole that had collapsed onto itself thousands of years ago and left humanity stranded in New Eden. In recent times, a massive interstellar war that cost innumerable lives had also seen an increase in activity at the EVE gate. A team, led by me, had been investigating this new anomaly, and had eventually uncovered a strange signature, as if the gate were responding to something elsewhere in the cosmos.
The signature was unrelated to any previous data and was thus discounted by most serious researchers. But I felt it was worth looking into. I believed that everything happened for a reason, and that the great gate would not grant me this single key unless it had something to unlock.
***
It took a lot of patience, which sometimes ran dry, and energy, which was often used up, but eventually I made the connection. Many things had been happening when the gate started to pulsate, but one of the more notable events was the Minmatar invasion of Amarr space, and the re-emergence of Heir Jamyl Sarum, who repelled the invaders at her doorstep.
The conflict, which had seen a massive fleet of warships torn to shreds, was shrouded in mystery and rumor. Some said Jamyl had merely willed the Minmatar ships to explode; others, that the fabled Minmatar Elders had seen their invasion brought to a halt and had enacted a suicide pact. There were rumors of an Amarr superweapon couched inside an Abaddon battleship, but nothing had been proven and no public data was available.
Whatever it was, the invasion event coincided with a spike in EVE gate activity. Moreover, once I had carefully picked apart the scant data on record from that momentous day in the skies above Mekhios, I discovered traces of that very same signature found in the EVE gate. The two were connected, I reasoned; the two must be connected. I knew I was on to something.
***
Acquiring a small vessel and a few stores of investigative equipment - interest in the gate ran high in the Sanctuary, and my once-strict overseers found themselves perfectly willing to let their people engage in all sorts of strange excursions - I started a research experiment to determine whether the anomalous signature could be found anywhere else in New Eden. Despite the scant evidence I had to work with, I had to fight the constant urge to bring the entirety of my corporation onboard. The further I travelled along this dark new road, the more certain I was that I had been set on it for some reason that would eventually involve the fates of all my brothers. That certainty was only compounded when I travelled to Mekhios and found not only clear traces of the signature, but indicators of where else it might be found. Those indicators took the form of tiny rips in space, little pockets of anomaly where the laws of physics was turned inside out. They were too small to affect the ships that passed through them, and much too volatile to be of any use for scientific study. But they were there, present - inasmuch as the window to another world can be said to exist at all - and like my own titanium faith, a similar window to another world of strange wonders, they led inexorably to my ultimate goal.
***
Like starry lights the little rips led me on a brief and hair-raising series of excursions, but only once did I risk losing my trail. It was on a jaunt into the deeps of Blood Raider space. The Blood Raiders, a gruesome and spacefaring sect of blood-worshiping cult called the Sani Sabik, had been involved in an assault on a station there, and little pools of antireality eddied around the place. It was as if the trail led in several different directions, one of whom seemed to go only deeper into the abyss of the Blood Raider world. I briefly considered following it, but resisted the temptation and set my gaze on a safe trail that led into Empire space again. There would be time enough to traverse the darker roads.
That trail led me to the high faithful: The court of the Amarr Empire. Despite our differences, I could not help but respect those people and the immense power their faith had granted them.
Their presence in this world was impressive, too. Colossal ships hovered past me in every direction, the golden sheen of their hulls reflecting the fire of the sun. In the distance I could glimpse the Empress's home at the Family Academy station in Amarr, and the caravans docking there bore the insignia and banners of high royalty. It made me wistful for something I couldn't explain: not a past I had missed, for the paths of my ancestry had never crossed those of the high royalty, but perhaps a future that might hold greater glory than I had ever imagined.
So I thought intently, and I formulated a plan, and I snuck my ship into the holiest of holies apparently undetected, looking with manic fervor for something I did not yet understand and, I increasingly feared, might not even recognize if I found it. The signature was there but so were guard ships, and while I trusted my Sisters reputation to get me at the least through the outer circles of Amarr security, I was certain that at some point I would find myself in the unwilling company of armed men with little inclination to do anything but ask me stern questions at gunpoint, much less grant open passage. I sampled what data I could, my minute vessel dwarfed by the warships that idled by, and I got out in the assured belief that my presence there had not been noted or understood.
***
Back at the Sisters base I spent several days and nights crunching the data, fuelled by the blinding fire of a righteous faith in my cause. I eventually found that I'd been close to the source already, for the latest data indicated that the signature was most present in T-IPZB, the depths of Blood Raider territory. It was a frightening and ecstatic moment, to realize that the trail went ever on and would lead me into the darkest of space. But I believed, in myself and in this.
To mount an expedition into Blood Raider space would require a proper crew on a proper ship outfitted with the equipment and supplies necessary for such a hazardous venture. It would also require official permission, which I duly requested, and which was summarily denied.
I was crushed, reduced to ashes and dust. My visions of a grand future, though barely formed, threatened to unravel already. The world was in the midst of interstellar war, the Sisters said, and while they respected the rights of their Sanctuary workers to continue their scientific inquiries, there were no ships, supplies or anything else they could spare to that effect.
It was absolutely ridiculous, and it would have been laughable were it not so tragic. I could feel the spiral of events, this path I was on, curl and turn into a noose. I knew exactly where I needed to go and even had some inkling of the 'why'; a tenuous 'why', certainly, but I had faith and knew it was a necessary thing.
In my desperation I started sharing information with anyone who would listen. I kept the destination to myself, but let enough slip that people knew I had an extremely important mission to undertake, one that involved the EVE gate, the Blood Raiders, and very possibly the truth of what happened on that fateful day of the Minmatar invasion.
And just like that, the noose relaxed. It had been like this, always and always, when we wanted to help the people who needed our aid. The world found a way for us, and whatever needed to happen it made happen for us. I felt blessed and exonerated.
I was given the ship, and given the supplies, and granted the crew.
***
I looked over my people. We would go somewhere no one had ever gone, and play our part in the grand scheme.
Everything leads you to where you are, I said to them. I gave them my name, and we moved on in faith.
The hangar floor, decorated as it was, had barely a dozen people waiting. Banners of the Amarr Empire slowly swayed in a wind that seemed omnipresent and cold.
The small crowd was a mix of station crewmembers, carefully vetted, and Royal Guard staff devoted to Empress Jamyl I and loyal to the death. Their conversation was kept to a minimum. They did not dislike one another, but the circumstances felt so solemn and vaguely unpleasant that most of them suspected they would be going their separate ways after the whole damn business was over, trying to wash away the memories through an infinite pour. A ship was soon to arrive, bearing the corpulent symbol of everything evil and spiteful in the world they knew.
***
In the Gallente Federation, down on Gallente Prime, on an open arena specifically adapted for this very occasion, a ship hovered into view. The crowd, numbering in the millions, was already reaching boiling point, having been pumped up by political speeches interspersed with popular entertainment. Here and there, massive towers holding building-size vidscreens broadcast every possible glimpse of the ship as it made a slow approach to the landing strip. The crowd reacted, and its screams were so loud they fed back through the speakers, creating an infinite loop of raucous hatred.
***
When the Empress stepped out of her temporary quarters and onto the main area of the landing bay, the quiet murmur of uncomfortable conversation dropped to an utter silence.
With the high ceiling, the banners, and the near-infinite echo of hushed voices, the place felt like a cathedral. The massive polyglas windows showed the cold space outside.
***
The crowd roared when President Foiritan took the stage. He waved to his people and smiled. It was not a wide smile, as one might exhibit when winning a game, but a smile carefully tempered with sadness, a smile that said its bearer had suffered through loss but come out a victor, and acknowledged the same in everyone the smile was aimed at.
***
The ship docked. It was a small vessel fitted for protection, although the armor and shielding were more for show than anything else. Its cargo had been transported from the dark end of space in all manner of ways, but in this area, under the aegis of the Empress, nobody would interfere.
There was only one passenger. He was the greatest traitor to the Amarr Empire since its inception. He had been brought here to die.
***
The ship doors opened and Anvent Eturrer was led out, blinking at the light and the noise. He was a former Federation Navy Grand Admiral, having been fired by President Foiritan for what appeared at the time to be gross incompetence during the Caldari State invasion. It had later proven to be treason, and had placed Eturrer at the top of the Most Wanted list of enemies of the Federation.
Eturrer's guards hung on to him, leading him to a separate podium stationed far enough from Foiritan and the presidential crew that they wouldn't be associated with him. The entire path they took was covered with unbreakable glass on all sides, lest Eturrer's death be brought to him before its allotted time. The guards were strong and clearly supported Eturrer, who appeared a little confused and stumbling. He had not been visibly harmed, but the vidscreens that zoomed in on his face, to the raw screaming of the attendant crowds, showed a faraway look.
***
Chamberlain Karsoth was led out of the ship and unceremoniously dropped onto the hangar floor. He lay there, wheezing and coughing, in front of the Empress and her retinue. His massive bulk was such that he could not even stand on his own.
Keeping her gaze firmly on the doomed man, the Empress spoke.
"Help him up."
When her guards hesitated she moved her head a slight touch. Her gaze rested on Karsoth, but there was the implication that it might be transferred onto someone else.
The guards jumped into action and heaved Karsoth's bulk upright. He winced when they touched him. His silk robes, tattered and soiled, rode up the limbs of his manifold body, displaying the cut and bruised skin below. The girth of his distended center was such that three men had to push at it, while a taller woman braced herself against his sternum, right where his heart would be. Karsoth's flesh was as pale as her flesh, but mottled with enflamed marks the rivaled the red color of her hair.
***
President Foiritan spoke to the attendant millions, and to the trillions watching through the live broadcast. His words were lost on most of the listeners, who heard what they expected to hear and filled in the gaps with a plenitude of rage. The gist of his speech was that the Gallente Federation had got their man, as the President had promised. There were difficult times ahead, ones where every man and woman in the Federation would have to make concessions to freedom in order to secure the safety of the entire nation. But for now, in this place, they had the proof of those sacrifices.
The crowd responded to the intonations in his voice. It seemed to undulate towards him, like a wave of hatred crashing on the surf. There was a large security area between the President and his people, walled off with unbreakable glass and monitored both by humans and hi-tech security hardware, and it only served to fire the crowd's emotions to roaring heights.
***
Even the torture had been done for purification and spirituality, and it had been done in quiet. The people of Amarr had the good sense to be embarrassed about what had happened under Karsoth's rule and just wanted to send the man on his way to judgment.
***
Everything was noise and light. There had been no obvious torture as such, but they'd made damn sure the prisoner didn't sleep or make himself comfortable on his journey. The Gallente people deserved a show.
***
The Empress stood in silence, looking at Karsoth. Eventually she asked, "You've made your peace with your God?"
He nodded quietly. A tiny bubble of snot inflated and deflated from one of his nostrils. The crew had retreated to the side, rubbing their tired arms and legs. The woman who'd held Karsoth up had been given leave to wash her hands.
***
In the middle of his speech, President Foiritan listed the accusations leveled against Eturrer and the outcome of their evaluation. He turned directly to the prisoner, who stared into the dead air, and spoke of the failure of Tripwire, the giving of information to the enemy, and the loss of Caldari Prime and countless lives in the process. The president added that thankfully the Federation had established a new order to ensure that the rest of the poison in Gallente soil would be rooted out without mercy.
He nodded to Mentas Blaque, who stood at the back of the podium, dressed in the now-familiar black costume of his newly formed Internal Security institution. They were informally known as the Black Eagles and Foiritan called them by that moniker in his speech, thus securing their name in history, for better or worse.
Returning to the subject of treason, Foiritan directed his words back to Eturrer. He said that the Federation had held a trial in Eturrer's absence, and added with an evil grin that he'd proven a hard man to get a hold of.
The crowd roared. They loved him for this.
There was, Foiritan said to Eturrer over the microphone and the vidscreens and the booming noise over millions of people, such overwhelming evidence of his guilt that he had not been needed to testify in his defense.
"You may speak when I am done," he added, "Much good it will do you. That is your right. In the Federation, everyone has a voice. Even the people whose lives you destroyed."
Mentas Blaque, whose Black Eagles had many other prisoners, nodded in agreement and said nothing.
***
The Empress said to Karsoth, "You allied with the Blood Raiders. You ruled through lies and terror. When the Minmatar came, your failures nearly cost us the Empire. Whatever commerce you brought to this kingdom, it was blackened money, tarred by the ties with the underworld that you brought upon the highest office in the land. You corrupted the innocent, betrayed those loyal to us, and turned this kingdom into an orgy of corruption and hedonism."
He took a deep breath and asked, "And for this I deserve death?"
The flags swayed gently in the cold wind.
"No," she said. "But what you deserve is beyond what this Empire can be bothered to do with you."
***
At the end of his speech, Foiritan turned to Eturrer again and asked whether he had anything to say.
Eturrer was handed a microphone. He took it and stood quite still. The booing from the crowd rose to a crescendo, threatening to drown him out.
He looked at Foiritan. For a moment the two men shared a look of strange understanding. The camera, seeing first the glint in Eturrer's eyes and then the uncomfortable expression on Foiritan's face, swiftly focused its eyeless gaze on the crowds.
Eturrer then looked at Blaque, and stared at him for entirely too long.
The crowd was losing its mind in angry anticipation.
Eturrer grinned at them, this entire world he had helped bring to ruin, and let the microphone drop to the ground.
***
Karsoth took a deep breath. "You disgust me," he said. "You rule over a kingdom of weaklings, all of whom are so lost in their piety over the next world that they've forgotten how to live properly in this one. All they do is look to their Almighty God to put things right, and just when I think that some of them might be coming around, you come crawling back like some worm out of Hell to make them all believe again." He stopped, swallowed. You disgust me," he repeated.
She walked up to him and raised her hand. He flinched.
She gently stroked her cheek and said, "You fear me."
Some small twinkle of an impulse to sneer alit in his mind and was extinguished just as soon. For she smiled at him, and in that smile was a terror such as he had never known in his life. The flesh on his body trembled. Although she was much smaller than he, she appeared to tower over him.
"Do you hate me?" he asked almost pleadingly.
"I do, at some level," she said. "But true hatred is a powerful emotion, and you are too pitiable for it."
***
It was time for the execution.
Souro Foiritan, president of the Gallente Federation, turned to his people and said, "It is time for us to decide. I will bear any burden for you that I can, but I can not be allowed to do this on my own. This is us, here and now. Some of you will have studied the evidence in this traitor's trial, but even if you have not, you can see the verdict."
The vidscreens switched to Eturrer and projected a large, red "GUILTY" beneath his face.
"We must all pull together now, and make the call. For our future, and for the continued freedom that we enjoy in this Federation, we have been willing to sacrifice much. Now we must make the ultimate sacrifice. We must show the world what it means when evil attempts to shake the foundations of our civilization."
Gigantic sound receptors slid down from the vidscreens. The screens themselves altered their picture: It still showed Eturrer, but now added a graphic overlay that pictured an audio level, trembling at the bottom rungs.
"The traitor's body has been injected with a chemical that will respond to sound waves of a certain frequency. We are going to monitor the voices of the people here tonight, filter them, and pipe them over the traitor. If they are loud enough, the chemical mixture will be activated. Your voices will be heard.
Even though the receptors had not activated yet, they trembled with the roar of the masses.
"One last thing, people of the Federation. We took great care in preparing this chemical and inserting it into the traitor. It will disrupt, alight, or otherwise distort a number of cell clusters in his body. Cells are small, and a few disruptions would not do much. But we paid heed to history. The chemical was made to infect one cluster for each of the individual whose lives this traitor led to loss.
"This is your call, my fellow citizens. This is your moment."
The receptors activated. The crowd's voices crashed on it like a tsunami.
On the vidscreens, Eturrer's body dismantled itself in an orgy of immolation. His skin bubbled, reddened, smoked and burst; his hair self-alit, and his bones bulged and rippled as tumors and other malignant growths forced themselves through the soft flesh of his organs and tore their way to freedom. Eturrer's mouth opened to let Eturrer's voice through, but his screams were lost in the crowd.
***
"You may speak your case, if you wish," the Empress said.
Karsoth breathed deeply but said nothing. He looked at her with those damaged eyes, and whatever was in them spoke of a conviction long since passed beyond words.
The Empress nodded, acknowledging his answer. She raised her hand and indicated a nearby passageway. "Walk through there to meet your end."
The nameless woman who'd pushed against his heart now walked in front of the old Chamberlain, her nimble, ghostly form leading the way to his death. He waddled in her wake, the guards holding him up.
The Empress stood there for a long time after, looking through the massive windows in the ceiling.
Outside, a star shone bright in the distance.
It was the morning of the twenty-fifth of the month in the district of Torsad-Laur, and the dread orb of the Amarr sun was just beginning its slow climb from the shimmering puddle of the horizon. As soon as his cold feet hit the warmth of the platform he felt the familiar throb and whistle of the quarter as it began like a great lumbering beast to rouse itself, scratching and snuffling in the umber haze of dawn.
The young Minmatar passed the mudbrick walls of the terminal with its sputtering praydrones and its ragged rush of beggars, felt the dark heady breeze caress the back of his neck as the day’s first frying smells slithered dustborne into his nostrils. He hadn’t missed Dam-Torsad, it was true; but now, upon returning, he had to give it its due. Few places in the universe – certainly none he had visited – possessed in the same proportions that uneasy mingling of purity and rot which forever straps the Amarr soul to the rack of its own contradiction.
Izoni Square was much the same, he reflected as he exited the terminal. Even at this early hour business was booming. Handmade cutlery, bootleg holosymphs, off-world condiments of varying legality, scriptural terp mods, Adakul manuals, the latest in carefully faked Caille leather. Plumes of smoke rose from innumerable stalls. A thousand smells wrapped around each other in the thick air, creating the unique melange that was the hallmark of Torsad-Laur and the reason for its nickname, the Cauldron. Most likely the flesh of every creature in New Eden was being cooked somewhere in this sprawling expanse, animal souls ascending from the shadow of the city’s bladed spires to find salvation in the copper skies. Groups of slaves passed through without cease, but whereas in other parts of Dam-Torsad they would be ghosts among the multitude, here they comprised the essence of the district’s beating heart.
Resisting the temptation to indulge in broiled blackfowl, he made his way past Chopamaia Yard, where children played among the cracked statues and worshipers swayed in communal rapture, their god-intermediaries whispering sweet eternity to them through embedded earpieces. He passed under the arch of Nekater, with its sad white little angel-guardians that every day shed tears of stone into the currents of beleaguered humanity flowing underneath them. He navigated the narrow cobbled corridors of the quarter’s south side, weaving among the people and gradually quickening his step until, some ten minutes later, he arrived at a squat flat-topped house nestled between two much taller ones. The road wound back sharply in both directions here, so that the little house gave the impression of being right outside the curve of a giant horseshoe. He looked around and sniffed the air. Flowers and ozone still.
"Da?" He rapped a few times on the basement door. There was no answer initially, but his father hadn’t been a fast man even in his younger years. A faint glimmer of light appeared inside the door’s window, then the door was thrown open. "Darmad!" shouted the old man. "Father," he replied, smiling and stepping inside. The two embraced, then exchanged the happily abashed pleasantries of a parent and child who haven’t seen each other in several years.
His father, Engru, was a tenth-generation indentured professor to The Hedion Academy Torsad subcampus, and a specialist in the ancient texts of several nations the Amarr had conquered in the course of taking over the planet they now stood on. His days were spent in his little basement translating manuscripts and taking notes and reconstructing languages several thousand years dead. Over the course of his time living out on the coast Darmad had become accustomed to plenty of fresh air, and now the familiar overpowering mustiness of his father’s apartment – a consequence of several dozen plants, intractable mold and very little ventilation – made it hard for him to breathe. They decided to visit a taproom located not far from the house, where they could take in their morning meal.
"How are things at the research facility?" asked his father as they ambled along the broadstreet, occasionally ducking a hoverstroller or an autocaravan. "Is your holder still giving you trouble?"
"Not really, not anymore," said Darmad. "He’s been more accepting of me since that small success of mine last year."
"I was proud of you for that one," said his father.
"I’m surprised you even heard. It wasn’t really such a big deal," said Darmad.
"A polymer synthesis technique that could revolutionize high-altitude building materials? Sounds like a big deal to me, son."
"I don’t know about revolutionize," said Darmad. "And remember, as far as everyone’s concerned it wasn’t Darmad Intajaf who made the discovery, it was his grand highness the good Lord Lucretio Kor-Azor."
"Of course," said his father. "No use in the slaves mucking up the works by getting famous, is there? We’re here. Mind your step, now. Welcome to the Font."
***
The place was basically one tremendous elongated corridor, a tall narrow space floored with cork and festooned with dormant string lights which hung powerless between corbets set high on the rough stone walls. From the corbets great plants of all shapes and sizes arced and drooped and spread their branches across the airspace. "I can see why you like it here," remarked Darmad as they took their seats in a small booth with synthetic leather padding just a touch too red for its surroundings.
It was midmorning and the place was sparsely occupied. As was typical of Torsad-Laur alone among the districts of Dam-Torsad, those few who were in here mostly kept to themselves. Dam-Torsad’s people had a great general tendency to stay in direct active communion with one another while in public, either chanting or praying or speaking loudly and at great length with their companions. At all waking hours their environment encouraged them, subtly and unsubtly, to do this; through praydrones and billboards and other disruptive phenomena, a habitual preference for communion over solitary contemplation was constantly reinforced in the populace. The Font, meanwhile, had people indulging in all manner of solitary idiosyncracy. At one table a heavyset girl with a pretty face sat munching on something, absently combing her thick hair. At another, a man rolled a cigarette contemplatively in the slanted rays of the morning sun while his companion read a book. Darmad felt relieved to be back. It was as if the chain around his soul had been loosened slightly.
They passed the morning in idle chatter, eating a light breakfast, content to simply enjoy each other’s presence. At around midday, morning prayer being over, the place’s regulars started filtering in from the busy streets of the quarter. His father on more than one occasion remarked that the crowd was strange this morning, that there floated about a faint apprehension quite atypical of this bustling straightforward place. Shortly after midday, Darmad was in the middle of relating an amusing anecdote when a great shout rose from the middle of the room and a figure detached itself from the throng.
"Well, look here!" It was a big man whose black beard and receded hairline framed a face deeply carved with smile-wrinkles. Darmad slid over one seat and the man sat down next to him.
"Hello, Crofton," said Engru.
"Engru," replied Crofton. "Your houseborn’s back, I see."
"Just for a short while," interjected Darmad with artificial cheer, annoyed at being spoken to in the third person. "How’ve you been?" The old discomfiture returned; growing up, he had always by turns been impressed with Crofton and frightened of him.
"Oh, you know. Keeping busy," said Crofton. He flagged down a waiter and ordered kacha root tea. "Perused the day’s palaver?" he said to no one in particular as the waiter carefully poured the dark green liquid into his cup.
Engru nodded faintly. "Vagaries and hearsay as usual, I suppose."
"I don’t think so. Not this time," said the big man. The waiter finished pouring the tea and bowed. Crofton grabbed the cup and perpetrated a gregarious slurp.
"Pray tell," said Engru.
Crofton began to speak in the deliberate diction that was his custom. His words were habitually infused with gravity, and propelled by his powerful voice they became missiles of rhetoric. He had been a leader once, an orator capable of moving men and mountains, but after consenting to a speaking engagement in Ammatar space he had been captured and given to the same university subcampus as Engru. This was Amarr’s preferred way of silencing her enemies. Killing was too crass. It acknowledged too much fear. The real victory didn’t lie in brute extermination (except in cases where required on a large scale for logistical or geographical reasons), but in defeating your picture of things with theirs.
Of course, particular sorts of people are immune to such tactics, and Crofton was of that general sort. A stodgy Brutor warrior-poet who had never had much truck with rigid self-image or outward appearance, he had never seemed to mind his lowered status. Toward his masters he indulged in the sign language of submission expected of every slave, but his area of expertise – representational systems of governance and their application in a pan-planetary setting – gave this "democrat savage" a certain degree of leeway toward the bemused scholars of Hedion. Time and time again, regardless, he had had to accept punishment for expressing his heretical views too loudly; but to Crofton, there were worse things than the electric lash.
Most of the people who made this quarter their home were similar to Crofton, though the vast majority were high-generation houseborn, slave children to slave children. Artists, musicians and academics, preachers and weirdoes and vagrants and madmen, all played their parts in the great cruel mechanism of the empire. It was said in the high halls of Amarr society that Torsad-Laur was the only slave-inhabited quarter where the gentry could walk at night without being attacked – and where, moreover, one could even have a conversation with a slave, if one were inclined toward an evening’s debasement.
"You feel the tension in the air, I can tell," Crofton was saying. "When was the last time people were set on edge this bad?" Another grand slurp and his cup was finished. He gave an imperious wave toward the waiters’ corner, then returned his attention to his boothmates.
"I know a man at the Civil Service office over in Torsad-Unan," he continued. "He’s not technically supposed to consort with me, but we maintain a bit of a clandestine correspondence. All very romantic and revolutionary. He wrote me," and here he leaned in towards the center of the table conspiratorially, "that something very very big was afoot. High-stratus decisions, perhaps as high up as the new Chancellor." Abruptly he stopped, then turned to look at Darmad. "You work for a Kor-Azor, don’t you?"
"The technical term is ‘owned by,’ but yeah," replied Darmad, somewhat acridly. "Distant cousin to Chancellor Aritcio several times removed, but a Kor-Azor."
"And you’ve heard nothing?"
"No one at my facility ever hears anything," replied Darmad.
"Ah," said the big man. Pensively he rubbed the brim of his saucer. "Normally I would dismiss it as a flight of fancy – my friend is a young man, and prone to those – but the general mood of the Cauldron today seems to support his notion that something is going on."
"Have you spoken with anyone around here?" asked Engru.
"Not yet," replied Crofton. There was a period of silence at the table as the waiter returned and refilled the cup in front of him. Presently the waiter left, but the silence remained.
Looking around, Darmad saw that the crowd in the place had dwindled significantly. As the other two men at the booth began to take their own notice, he became aware of a cadenced din, a distant whisper traveling over the city, reverberating off its tired walls.
"What is that?" said his father. Crofton stood up and made to exit the place, with the other two following. Just outside, standing on the portico which overlooked the gigantic expanse of Izoni Square, they squinted against the searing midday sun and were able to make out, through the plumes of smoke and dust, the face of Empress Jamyl on several billboards around the area’s far perimeter. Despite the preternatural hush of the assembled thousands who had broken with their daily business to listen, the trio were unable to make out her words.
Darmad had the sudden queasy notion that there was going to be some great change to adjust to, and giving up the useless effort of trying to understand the words he sat down heavily on the portico’s stone floor, cold in the shade of the canvas canopy. The two older men stood stock still, craning their necks comically toward the indifferent skies.
A young man came tearing up the steps to the portico, his incoherent screaming preceding him by almost a full minute. Crofton stepped into his path and the smaller man barreled into him with a thudding impact. Crofton swiftly grabbed him by the shoulders. "Relax. Relax!" he shouted at the man. "What is it?"
The young man made a conciliatory hand gesture and gently shook free. "The slaves," he said, panting. "We’re… freeing them. Us. We’re being freed." He coughed.
"What?" said Darmad.
"They’re freeing the slaves," said the man, still coughing.
Engru blinked, once, twice. "I’m sorry. What?" he said.
"Us," he panted. "Minmatar, ninth-gen and up, all the preachers, all the academics."
Crofton just stared.
The young man pointed vaguely out toward the tremendous crush of people, some moving to and fro, some wide-eyed, others on their knees.
From the far end of the Cauldron, a roar was rising.
***
"No good. No good," said Crofton, shaking his head. He had just repeated the phrase "No good can come of this" about twenty times, and was now down to simply "No good." Around him, the Font was packed with people thrashing and flailing amid laughter and cries and shouts, each person reeling in their own way from the unexpected crumbling of a wall in their mind.
The three had spent the afternoon lost in the wash of people, watching preachers and podiumites deliver sermons and speeches, watching street musicians play instruments they had up until now not been allowed to touch, watching hustlers and beggars in crazed jubilee on the city’s whirling boulevards. When they had returned to the Font in the late afternoon to discover their booth taken they had repaired to the end of the bar and promptly switched from tea to alcohol. With the string lights now draping a warm glow over the encroaching darkness, Crofton had begun to elaborate.
" It’s a brilliant public relations coup, I’ll give her that much," he was saying. "She’s definitely figured out all the angles here. Anyone who points out the practical flaws will be drowned in a torrent of righteousness. Never mind that up until a few hours ago, these people were all subhumans unworthy of the legal rights bestowed upon proper people. The fact that it’s a cynical political maneuver will be completely drowned out by the cackling of the righteous."
"What makes you think it’s entirely cynical?" replied Engru. "Perhaps she’s had a change of heart. ‘Who can tell what winds yet sway the soul of man?’" he quoted, from a favorite scriptural passage.
"Woman," corrected Darmad, quite unhelpfully.
"States are not run on compassion, Engru, not even states that are built around religion," said Crofton. "Speaking of which – what do you think will happen to the slaves who have practiced their own religions? If they want their marriages and families registered as legal units, they’ll need to take up the state religion. How many of them will be able to afford the registration? How many of them will be able to afford or figure out how to pay their own taxes, for that matter? Who’s going to teach millions upon millions of freshly minted freemen how to survive within the system? She’s not banking on these people to stay, let me tell you that much."
Neither of the other two said anything. Darmad was about to speak, but just as he opened his mouth a young woman with a tray of drinks fell foul of the crowd and crashed into him. After helping her up and sending her on her way, he turned back to his companions and gave a little shake of the hand, sprinkling droplets of grain alcohol onto the countertop. "Getting rowdy in here," he remarked.
"That’s another thing," said Crofton without skipping a beat, his great head swiveling around to scan the crowd. "She knows this will cause them to get so excited that there will be mass gatherings in some places which are going to turn ugly. More fodder for the spin machine."
Darmad made his own survey of the place. At every table and every booth, on chair arms, in laps, on table corners and windowsills, the smiling faces of young people and old people commingled. Though he generally considered himself a rational man not given to easy emotion, he nonetheless found to his surprise that it was almost impossible not to get swept up in the roiling elation that pervaded the room. You had only to look up and you would feel it.
He looked back at Crofton, who had his head cocked to the side and was staring at one of his own elbows, which rested on the bar. It was impossible to see what he was thinking. He snuffled once, then ordered another drink.
"Ploys, ploys, they’re all ploys," he began again. "She wants the docile ninth-gen Mins to go scurrying back to the Republic and start the Reclaiming for them. She wants everyone to see how well-behaved they’ve managed to make them. As to the rest of them, she just wants to make it known how they function better shackled than free."
"Us."
"Pardon me?"
"Us, Crofton. The rest of us. You and I are free, too."
A small silence, then Crofton said: "The thought never even crossed my mind." He downed his drink.
Darmad suddenly had one of those small epiphanies that seemed to him only to take place when circumstance and mindset conspired in the human soul to strike a perfect chord, one that would allow the recipient for a few precious seconds to reverberate in unison with the rest of creation. He was standing with his back to the bar, looking at a beautiful girl who stared back at him from one of the booths further along the opposite wall. There was a look in her eyes that he would see in every face around here, for the rest of the night and well beyond.
"I’m not so sure it’s as bad as you’re making it out to be," he said, turning back to Crofton. "I mean, look around you. Are you even taking note of what’s happening? She may have, as you said, figured out all the angles, but I don’t think her conniving soul even realized what freedom – the idea of the thing she’s just given us, you see, the concept of it – does to a man."
"What does it do to a man?" asked Crofton in a low voice, barely audible over the raucous din.
"Well. It gives him hope, I suppose."
At this Crofton laughed and laughed. He smiled a strange smile and then laughed some more and then fiddled with his glass and looked at Engru, and then he looked back down and grimaced, and just like that a little tear dropped into his glass. With a great deal of dignity he retrieved his coat and made his excuses, and when he said goodbye he didn’t look in Darmad’s eyes but only at his chest.
***
The boy and his father sat silently through the night, savoring in their souls the bittersweet taste of history while Dam-Torsad’s, and the entire Empire’s, myriad dramas mighty and small unspooled around them. Come morning, with the revelries dying down, the pair made their way to the door.
"Boy."
"Yes, da?"
"Proud of you for that one, too."
He took his father’s elbow and gingerly the two of them made their way down and out, out into the bright and terrible morning.
# Federation Transcript, FIO Report #453-RT3.
# Security Level: Red-Gamma-Alpha
# The Kameiras Program.
Throughout its history, the austere Amarr Empire has conquered many peoples. In its expansion it has encountered fractured Neolithic tribes, egalitarian societies, industrial behemoths and everything in between. All were crushed and enslaved: Some were eventually integrated into Amarrian society, some remain slaves and others were simply forgotten - for only the largest societies are recorded in any detail. On the Ni-Kunni homeworld, for example, one whole continent was inhabited by a fierce indigenous people who were judged worthless for anything other than the most lowly slave castes. Their rich culture and heritage has long since been eradicated and their people reduced to mere half-breeds scattered among the countless multitudes.
With improved military oversight, this tactic of burnt earth and ruined people eventually changed . In its conquests, the military made note of the most naturally warlike, aggressive and resilient and dubbed them Martial Races. It then indoctrinated these into its armed forces, mostly as expendable cannon fodder to be used up instead of the righteous chosen of God. Some excelled, and achieved such repute that they became a staple of the Amarrian military machine. The most successful - and, indeed, feared - of these are the Kameiras.
The Kameiras are one of the products of the infamous Human Endurance Program (H.E.P.) that the Amarr ran on their Minmatar slave populace. It began as an attempt to measure the Minmatar tribes' durability and effectiveness when it came to various labor tasks - to see how far they could be pushed before breaking, much like a tool would be stress-tested. Over time it evolved into much more than that, becoming a tale of horror for the Minmatar as Amarr scientists began to explore the true limits of their body and psyche.
The program came to the attention of the military who, having witnessed the tenacity and ferocity of the Minmatar defiance first hand, were keen to explore their uses in combat. The H.E.P. scientists, eager to get military backing, began research into methods to re-educate the strongest Minmatar slaves and train them into obedient, effective soldiers. Disappointingly, initial training methods proved mostly ineffective. The idea was thought to have merit, however, and a dedicated team was assigned to advance the program.
Finding it difficult to train unruly adult Minmatar warriors in obedience and faith, the team opted for a more extreme measure. They began a breeding program, selecting the best specimens from their slave population and creating the strongest of offspring, raising them according to a scientific regime they had devised. The regime went through several revisions based on data gleaned, and was altered considerably in the initial stages until it became the Kameiras program that exists today.
The beginning
Every maturing fetus of the breeding program is rigorously monitored, subject to a series of genetic tests to see if it is developing to the exacting standards of the Kameiras. If the specimen is found to be genetically unworthy – if it would be born short, weak, sickly or afflicted with any of a multitude of genetic abnormalities - then the pregnancy is terminated. Any surviving neonates are given over to a specialized care centre where Amarrian females take responsibility for their upbringing in supervised crèches until the age of six, whereupon the infant enters its first Subigo House, a place of training and education.
Junior Subigo
Here the subject begins a vigorous physical regime. The Amarrians have learned that this is the most effective time to begin adapting the Minmatar body for military duty. Increasing in pace and vigor as the body grows, the training regime pushes the child to an established limit that will not adversely affect its later growth. The youth is schooled in combat arts and forced to attend an extensive indoctrination program. This program forms the foundation of maintaining control over the Kameiras when they are fully fledged adults. They are institutionalized into the Amarrian faith - taught about the Amarr God and his love for them, their place in his creation and their duty to uphold his law for the good of all. For all intents and purposes, they are taught that they too are Chosen. Although this continues to be a hotly debated topic within certain circles of the Empire, time has proved it to be the most effective form of control.
Senior Subigo
Most survive the rigorous Junior Subigo and undertake the testing trials at the age of fourteen. If they survive this tortuous experience they are moved onto the Senior Subigo House, where they are divided into combat-sized groups. In teaching them to act as part of a greater whole, their instructors take their training to a whole new level: The young neophytes are schooled in a wide range of skills including strategy, tactics, survival, personal combat and the use of firearms, body armor as well as wide range of military equipment and vehicles. If they survive this intense period they then undertake the final and most testing trial. If this is passed, they are accepted as adepts; if they fail, they do not return.
Kameiras
At the age of nineteen the trained Kameiras adepts are indoctrinated into their operational unit and serve as junior members until they have blooded themselves in combat. The Amarrians retain strict control over the Kameiras, as they have by necessity raised intelligent soldiers that can react and adapt autonomously to varied combat situations. Their education nearly always keeps them from questioning their place. A soldier sees much, though, so the Kameiras do not serve as one company but rather are attached to standard armed companies as their strike force, maintained apart from the regular infantry. The very nature of their purpose - to serve as special operation units and front line forces - means that in the very rare cases where a Kameira might suspect something is not well with the world, he doesn't remain alive long enough to act upon it. That being said, it is often true that the Kameiras troops are more devout than their true Amarr cohorts. They have been indoctrinated and trained for this way of life since they were born, and they know or want nothing else. For the most part, Kameira units are led by Amarrian officers An individual may be promoted some way up the command chain if he is deemed loyal enough, but these cases are relatively rare, and individuals that achieve this sort of modest rank are kept under close surveillance.
However, certain traits tend to creep in. Most are relatively trivial things that are easily brushed aside by their officers; for example, Kameiras troops are allowed to keep their hair long, something not permitted and strictly enforced in the regular Imperial army. There is one tradition among the Kameiras troops that is particularly abhorrent to the Amarr, who have banned it in theory and only relented in practice due to negative effects on morale of the otherwise indomitable Kameiras units. Thus, the tradition is officially banned, but under the furtive light of dark moons it continues.
In the aftermath of battles, Kameiras gather what bodies they can of their fallen and burn them in great funeral pyres. This is done in a matter-of-fact way, without emotion. Once the fires have burnt out the surviving Kameiras cut themselves and then rub the ash from the pyres, the ashes of their dead brethren, into their open wounds. In this way, a permanent mark is formed. The Kameiras carry their dead with them, and the mark serves as a lasting reminder of those who fell. An old soldier may have many scars of the lost covering his body and in this way can come to look akin to his free Minmatar brethren. No one knows how this tradition crept in - not even the Kameiras themselves - but it now persists throughout all units in the Kameira war machine.
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My father...
... well, never mind.
***
The Gallentean smiled when I hit him. I had him up against a wall, hands pinned by two other Provs, and I'd already cracked his ribs and beaten out a few teeth. He smiled. It wasn't that rictus, either, the one where they're in so much pain their faces tense all up.
"Enjoying this, eh?" one Prov said.
"Shut up," I said. I didn't like baiting, never had. What you gave the mark was clarity, a purpose to his pain. You made him understand, yes, that you enjoyed this and would gladly do it forever unless he made it stop, but that he could make it stop, too. Not right away, necessarily, but if he changed and found himself a new focus in life, there would be hope. The mark could never be made to feel like the entire thing was merely a heartless joke.
He was exhausted and his head lolled down. I put my hands under his chin, lifted it back up so he'd look me in the eyes.
"Why did you do those things?" I said. "We're here to stay. You're not changing that. All you're doing is making trouble." I raised my other hand and hit him hard in the solar plexus. Air and blood gushed out of his mouth. I would have to clean the jacket before going on the day shift tomorrow.
This time he lifted his head of his own accord. And he smiled again. One eye swollen shut, mouth a bloody mess. There was no defiance in that smile, none of that stupid attitude you get from someone who's trying to ride the pain. No taunting, that weapon of the weak and powerless. He was somewhere else already and I hadn't put him there.
"Let him go," I said.
The Provs were stunned. I sighed, and wondered - and not for the first time - where the hell the force had gotten these guys.
"Next person goes deaf gets twelve weeks on the tundras," I said.
They dropped him like a bag of rocks.
We left him there, coughing blood on the scuffled snow.
***
I was twelve when I was accepted into the Caldari Army. I was strong for my age and I had long since learned what the world did to people.
It wasn't running away, though it was an escape. I had learned many things and one of them was patience. So I trained hard and I studied as much as I possibly could, though I knew that I'd never go as far as I'd like. What mattered to me was serving the State.
Some people, when they joined, seemed to have nothing to do but complain. Not loudly, and sometimes not even in words, but they resented their place and easily forgot just how much the army had done for them. It took us in, all of us, no matter how broken we were. It forgave, in its fashion. It gave rules and discipline, which was nothing new, but it never strayed from them, and that amazed me. If you screwed up, you paid the price and were usually allowed to carry on, and if you kept yourself in line you were left alone. You did what you were told.
I couldn't bear the standard, not always. I lost my temper. Something in me needed to lash out at the world. What I got from the army wasn't a cure - the anger was a part of me that couldn't die without leaving me diminished - but an environment where I could take it to the edge without jumping off. I could be myself as much as was possible without the threat of failure.
So while I didn't move upwards I crawled a slanted sideways path, rising through persistence rather than brains or kissing ass. That was all right. I accepted that. And when the time came they needed people to take care of our new world - this smoking crater of a homeland, this iceworld they called Caldari Prime - they didn't come to the ones who had brains, for brains go remarkably soft on frozen tundras, and they didn't come to the ass- kissers, for their lips would've chapped in the cold. They came to the ones who knew damn well how to survive.
***
Morning after, and another meeting of the city overseers. I paid the best attention I could, but I was still tired from last night's dark round and kept zoning out.
I did appreciate the necessity of these meetings. We needed to hold an entire planet using a force half staffed with thugs. Equal measures of peacekeeping and intimidation had kept a lid on the angrier locals - I took an active part in these - but that wouldn't be enough for the average man on the street. Life had to be kept going, rolling on from one day to the next. It was a supreme irony that in a society whose governance had been torn from the hands of one power by another, our greatest efforts went into convincing people that nothing much had changed. They needed to stay indoors late at night, and luxuries had been restricted, but this was nothing new on a planet made of ice. What they really needed was to be left alone, to not be reminded of how much had changed now that they seemed to be settling into some kind of a groove.
So we had evacuated one of their underwater cities, a massive place encased in a polyglas dome, and we had taken all the major troublemakers - the ones whose absence would be less a diplomatic problem than their continued presence - and we had put them down under.
Nobody knew what went on in that place. There were plenty of guesses, and everyone knew someone who claimed insider info, but talking about it did little more than generate rumors. The higher-ups didn't mind. We'd even subtly been given leave to spread some rumors of our own. I think the way they figured it, the more people talked and worried about that place, the less of a risk that any of the locals would want to go there. We already had hundreds of thousands, but the dome could room millions.
We were scrolling through the list of new recruits - we call them 'recruits' because it sounds so much better than 'abductees' - when a face caught my attention. It wasn't bruised and had a conspicuously full mouth of teeth, but it was unmistakably the man I'd been working on the night before.
"Stop, hold, wait a sec," I said. "What'd this one do?"
The presenter checked his records and listed a series of crimes against the State, some more severe or ideologically motivated than others. Many of them were familiar - were, indeed, the reason we'd seen fit to have our little talk with him - but there was a spate of offences that absolutely marked him for down under and which I had nevertheless missed when going over his records before the beatings. I found this very uncomfortable and asked when he'd committed those crimes.
The presenter checked the data again and raised an eyebrow. "Quite recently. He got through three of them yesterday, between eighteen hundred hours and evening call."
Which put it after the time I'd last checked his record, but before we'd caught him. He knew he was going down under.
I thought about him. That smile.
My ears heard my mouth say, "I'm going with him."
The presenter blinked.
"In the shuttle. The shipment he's on when he goes down under. I'm going to be on it."
In the silence I felt an explanation was called for, but the best I could muster was, "I want to be sure he doesn't make trouble."
I kept quiet for the rest of the meeting, but I had some friends of mine do a little datamining afterwards.
***
The shuttle had several dozen individual cells, each of which contained one prisoner, one bunk bed and one vidscreen embedded in the wall. It also had a small area reserved for the accompanying guards.
The underwater trip would take us a little over twelve hours. It could be made faster, but expenses were kept to a minimum with these guys. Their cells were soundproofed and the vidscreens, which were cheap and kept behind unbreakable barriers, were voice-activated. We could have drugged the prisoners for the duration of their trip, but that would have brought us into, hah, muddy waters. You were only supposed to administer drugs to prisoners if you had a clear reason to consider them a threat, and in doing so you brought the whole process one step closer to barbarism. Strictly speaking we didn't have to provide them with any kind of way to pass the time - there was a clause somewhere in the law that allowed us to call this a temporary solitary confinement, much as the one in regular prisons - but leaving a civilian in an empty cell for twelve hours with nothing to do but think would not make for a nice disembarkment down under.
Besides, there was one person I wanted to keep awake.
When I entered his cell he was sitting sideways on the bunk bed, looking pointedly at the wall. His bruises were dark purple and yellow.
He didn't seem to recognize me at first. When he did, he visibly stopped breathing for a few seconds, then let out a long exhalation and smiled. He was afraid of me, but he knew something I didn't, something he thought would keep him safe. That was good. That could be worked with.
I went to the wall across from him and sat on the floor. Our interrogators believed in taking on a dominant position; I didn't. I believed in starting small, from a weakened position, and letting the subject build an image of you in his mind far greater than the real you.
There was something about his smile. They'd given him new teeth, but there was something more. It was almost as if I'd seen it before.
When it hit me a few second later, it hit like a hammer, and I was glad I was already sitting.
He noticed me gasp, and his smile faded. "What?" he said.
"I know you," I said.
"You beat me up a few days ago," he said.
I leaned my head to one side. It was there; it was definitely there. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen it before.
"I knew someone once," I said. "A kid. Tough one, as it goes. He'd had a rotten time of it, been smacked around and plenty worse, but he had that look. I still remember seeing a picture of him, taken when he enlisted. It said, I am free. I've gone beyond. Nothing you do will matter now, nothing you say will reach me now. I belong to something greater."
His eyes narrowed and I knew I had him.
"You've joined the rebels." I said.
The smile returned.
"You're on your way to down below of your own goddamned intention," I said. Not in a tone of surprise, but annoyance. "Nobody does that. So you have a plan. But you couldn't do it alone, not if you want to make a difference. So you've joined the rebels, and you have someone waiting for you down below."
He kept quiet. I had not asked him a question, nor given him an order.
"You have no idea what you'll be in for, down there," I said. "Nobody does. So you couldn't possibly be planning a coup, or a disruption, or anything that requires a reasonable degree of forethought. And you have no specialties; I've checked. All that you have is a life like everybody else."
"Not anymore," he said.
"Well, no," I conceded. "Not anymore."
"Not after you came."
"Let's not get into the whole occupation business. It wasn't my call any more than yours," I said. I waited a beat before adding, "I'm sorry for your family."
"That's alright," he said with complete equanimity. He was leading me on. He didn't care about any of that. The moment we'd moved away from down below, he'd gotten more comfortable with answering back.
He'd given up his old life, and he had no reason to believe he could make anything constructive of his new one. Time to push him.
I got up, brushed myself off and said, "I'm turning this shuttle around. Have a nice day."
I had not even taken a step before he let out an outraged, "What?"
"You heard me. I can't let you get anywhere near that place. You're a security risk."
"You can't do this," he said. "I have to get down there. I demand you take me down there." The smile was gone. His hands trembled.
"Well, that's a first," I said. I felt for him. I truly did. Had my dream been snatched away from me like this, it would've been the end of my life, too.
He got up. I thought he was going to attack me, but instead he backed himself into a corner. "Don't come any closer," he said.
"Hey," I said, "I wasn't planning to. I'm going to leave this cell now and-"
"I'm carrying a bomb," he said.
Some words change everything. 'Sniper' is one. I'm told 'love' is another. 'Incoming' is pretty big these days, being the bastard child of 'invasion'.
"You were strip-searched and scanned before you got onboard. Anything conspicuous in your system would've been flushed out on the spot. You're lying," I said, more out of hope than any real conviction.
"Transfusions," he said.
I was stunned.
It was possible, in theory, to replace certain bodily fluids with explosive counterparts. You could alter a person's glands to produce the new type, so long as you ensured his body had enough raw materials to draw on, or you could swap out the old type for the new along with an agent that would keep it from breaking down.
It was hideously expensive, extremely unreliable and utterly destructive. Even if he
never set off the explosive reaction, a person who underwent something like this would die of massive organ failure within a few days. The body was not happy being turned into a chemical weapon.
I'd had my agents do some datamining, and it had revealed connections between this man and ten others on this very same shuttle. All of them had committed crimes serious enough to warrant transport down under, but worse, all of them were connected to an earlier transport that just yesterday had brought a lot of fresh people to the city. Gods knew how many of them were walking bombs.
"You were going to blow up the city," I said. I couldn't believe it.
He stared at me, silent and defiant.
"It wouldn't be enough with just one of you, but with everyone you know on this shuttle and all your friends who got in there yesterday. You..." I simply could not get my head around this. "There are hundreds of thousands of people down there. Your people."
"They're dead to us," he said. "Everyone is, once they're sent down under. For all we know it may be an empty husk."
"But you're hoping it's not," I said, the realization dawning in merciless light. "You're pulling a Nouvelle Rouvenor. You're going to find some spot and you're going to goddamn detonate yourselves, in the hope you can crack the dome and destroy the entire city. And then you're going to get it all blamed on us."
He smiled again, and I remembered feeling that smile on my own face, all those years ago.
"So now you have a choice," he said to me. "You can let the shuttle dock and send me off. You'll leave. I'll stay. Whatever happens is no longer your concern."
"Or we turn this thing around and you blow it to bits."
He shrugged.
"Those friends of yours that arrived yesterday?" I said. "They're still in the investigation lounge. But you knew that. What you didn't know is that I had them tagged, which means they'll be held there until I give the go-ahead."
"You're lying," he said.
I was. "Maybe I am," I said.
He got to his feet.
"This shuttle is getting turned around," I said.
He lifted his hands and looked at them, as if he were seeing them for the first time.
I told him, "I knew someone once who thought he had all the answers. Took a while before I realized he didn't; he just stayed in control of the questions."
He looked at me now.
"Last time I saw him was through a bulletproof pane of glass. I was leaving and he wasn't. I'll never forget that expression. I was going somewhere he wasn't, I had become something he would never be, and he knew it."
"You're a vicious thug," he said to me.
"I'm a part of the State," I said. "And you are not. No more than he was. And his gutted expression, all those years ago, is the same one you have now."
I raised my own hands. "He would have taken you up on your offer. I will not."
As he started to move, I lunged for him.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
The scene is a bar in the Great Wildlands, at the outskirts of Minmatar space. It is very late at night.
A recent war in New Eden has spurred the three lost Minmatar tribes to return home. The Thukkers, wanderers of space, have been invited to rejoin the Republic, and are preparing for their section of space to become an autonomous part of the Minmatar collective. The Nefantar, also known as the Ammatars, who were thought to have been traitors against their own people in an older war, were revealed as protectors and invited back after their homeworld was ravaged. The Starkmanir, once thought extinct but kept alive through the good grace of the Nefantar, were rescued and offered to rejoin their people.
It is a time of war, and integration of these three tribes has temporarily taken a back seat to the efforts on the front lines. In the meanwhile, refugees and hopefuls from the tribes have situated themselves in refugee stations such as this one, waiting for permission, visas, housing and jobs in Minmatar space. The bar is in the middle of one of those refugee areas.
SISPUR, a Nefantar, sits at his table, drinking. ANNES, a Starkmanir, enters, gets a beer from the bartender, looks around at the empty hall, and eventually goes over to SISPUR's table, pulling up a chair.
ANNES
This free?
SISPUR
Sure.
ANNES sits.
ANNES
Didn't think anyone else would be here. Most everyone is at home, asleep.
SISPUR
Most everyone clearly doesn't have any worries about uprooting from their home, taking whatever stuff they could carry and plonking it down here while they wait to hear if the homeland will take them in at last.
ANNES
It'll take us in, there's no doubt about that. You know it as well as I do.
SISPUR takes a long sip from his drink.
SISPUR
Yeah, I guess I do. But I hate the waiting. I had a life back on Ammatar, sad as it was. I was appreciated in my own way. I don't like waiting to be taken into a place where I'm not appreciated, much as I want to get back.
TRIAT, a Thukker man, enters the bar, grabs a drink and sits down at the same table without a word.
TRIAT
How's it going?
ANNES and SISPUR look at him wordlessly.
TRIAT
Pretty dead here tonight. Thought I was the only one alive.
TRIAT laughs.
TRIAT
So what you guys doing up here so late? You selling?
TRIAT looks at the two stone faces, then laughs again.
TRIAT
Nevermind. Anyone catch the game recently?
TRIAT drains his glass, burps and waves at the bartender.
TRIAT
Hey! Fill-up!
SISPUR, in a frosty tone
So, is this the part where you show us your tattoos?
ANNES
Or puke all over the table, maybe?
TRIAT stares at them. The bartender comes over and fills his glass. There is a tense moment; then TRIAT rubs his face with his hands, sighs and chuckles a little.
TRIAT
Not coming off too well, am I?
SISPUR
I've seen Fedos with better personality, really.
ANNES
But you're welcome to join us, if you like. Not as if there's anything else to do right now.
TRIAT
Sorry, guys. I've been hanging out with the thuks too much. I'm Triat.
SISPUR
Sispur.
ANNES
Annes.
SISPUR
I'm the local traitor, and Annes here's the local revolution symbol, and we were just talking about how our motherland seems to want us here and gone all at the same time. What's keeping you up this time of night?
TRIAT leans back in his chair and gives this proper thought.
TRIAT
The same, I guess. I dunno if you know how we live, travelling through space and selling our stuff, but there isn't as much insecurity as you might think. If you're going to eke out some kind of existence up here, you need to be real good at being proactive, finding your own sources of raw material and working your own deals.
ANNES
And you think rejoining the Republic will damage that.
TRIAT
Well, if all that independence is completely taken away, and everything is out of your hands, you're going to get uncomfortable. Stop sleeping, maybe. Drink instead and act like a fool.
SISPUR
But you guys are joining up by choice, or at least you voted to have the Wildlands turn into some quasi-esque part of Republic space. You all retain your holdings and your independence. It doesn't seem like your life has to change that much.
ANNES
I don't think that's what he's after.
SISPUR
Oh?
ANNES
I think he's one of the Thukkers who's actually moving house, into the Republic
TRIAT nods.
TRIAT
There were votes, and talk of independence, but the writing really is on the wall for anyone not too stupid to read it. The Republic is going to go through an upswing. And as much as we Thukkers brag about living on the edge, we do spend a lot more time than we'd ever admit simply trying not to look down.
ANNES
So you want safety.
TRIAT looks a little hurt at the comment.
TRIAT
I think it'd be nice simply to have a home again. Some base of operations where I can solidify, get my act together, and rely on tomorrow being the same as today. Somewhere that doesn't tremble as it moves. Or move at all, come to that.
SISPUR
And it looks like that's about to happen. So why're you awake, and drinking?
TRIAT
Because I think too much. Like I said, you stay proactive, always looking for connections and deals, which is about the same as looking for a way you can crowbar yourself into someone else's business. It's about being dominant. And that's impossible in this life I have now, when I'm waiting for some outside system to lay down the law for me.
TRIAT takes a drink
TRIAT
But it's better than that dead uncertainty. It has to be. How is it with you guys?
SISPUR
I'm pretty certain.
TRIAT
That's good.
SISPUR
I'm certain I'm going to be treated like crap over there.
TRIAT
Really?
SISPUR
Sure.
TRIAT
I thought you guys were heroes.
TRIAT points his glass at ANNES
TRIAT
For saving your asses. No offence.
ANNES smiles.
SISPUR
That was only a small group of people. The rest of us ...
SISPUR takes a deep breath.
SISPUR
The rest of us just tried to get stuff done the best we could. Live our lives and not leave anyone off any worse than we had to. We weren't traitors of the Minmatar cause, any more than we were saviors of the Starkmanir.
TRIAT
But people treat you that way.
SISPUR
Either or, yes. Scum of the earth or savior of the people. We're not humans in their eyes, we're symbols.
ANNES
No, I think we're the symbols.
SISPUR
Well, all right. True. Then we're the mirrors. People use us to see what's inside themselves. If they want to see Minmatar having been betrayed, ruined and left in tatters, then that's what we are to them. If they want everything to have worked out, with the saviors of the slaves and all that, then that's what we helped accomplish. They externalize their feelings on us.
TRIAT
We've had some of that, too. But we're used to people ragging on us. Comes with being a merchant.
ANNES
We're not used to it at all. I don't know what we're used to. I don't even know what we are.
TRIAT
People seem to think you're simpletons, for the most part.
ANNES
What do you think?
TRIAT takes a sip from his drink
TRIAT
I think you know when to be quiet, which is a lot more important than most people realize.
ANNES nods to SISPUR.
ANNES
I don't want to be accepted back to the fold.
ANNES nods to TRIAT.
ANNES
I don't even want to find a new home. I want my old home back. It wasn't an easy life, but it wasn't bad, either. It was just a life.
SISPUR
Half a life, some might say. And thanks to us - or despite us - you're now being brought into the full glory of what you can be.
ANNES
Apparently those people know me better than I know myself. You know what's funny? Those very same people are treating us Starkmanir like the beasts of the field.
ANNES lifts his glass close to SISPUR, and stares at him through it, wide-eyed.
ANNES
They'll go up to us and say, "THIS ... IS CALLED ... A KHUMAAK. CAN YOU SAY KHUMAAK?"
ANNES lowers the glass again, leans back and takes a sip.
ANNES
Apparently we're budding geniuses and slobbering retards all at the same time.
TRIAT
And you were taken from slavery and left floating in space, so now there's a huge amount of insecurity brewing in your ranks.
ANNES
Yeah. Because we really don't want to be ungrateful. Really, we don't. But we've suddenly had this new identity thrust on us, and have no idea who we are anymore. Just the same as you guys-
ANNES nods to SISPUR
ANNES
-and now we're just ... there. Like figures carved out of wood.
TRIAT raises his glass
TRIAT
Beasts of the field, man.
TRIAT, ANNES and SISPUR clink their glasses together. ANNES starts to say something, then stops.
ANNES
This ... drunken woman came up to me the other day. Thoroughly, thoroughly drunk. It was in some bar, before I was transferred to this camp. I was on my own, minding my own business when she said to me, way too loudly, that she wanted to take me home and have sex with me.
TRIAT and SISPUR's eyes go wide. TRIAT takes a sip of his beer to cover his surprise.
ANNES
She said she'd never done it with a Starkie
TRIAT chokes on his beer.
ANNES
Hey, you okay?
TRIAT nods and takes a moment to regain his composure, with ANNES looking on concernedly.
TRIAT
Uh, how'd you get out of that one?
ANNES smiles faintly and looks at the air.
ANNES
Who says I did?
TRIAT and SISPUR fall quiet.
ANNES
It wasn't that great. She had nice breasts, though.
TRIAT and SISPUR remain quiet.
ANNES laughs.
ANNES
What? You guys think I'm backwards, too? Come on.
TRIAT takes a small sip of his beer.
TRIAT
No, you're right. I guess we're all human.
SISPUR
And that's really it, isn't it? I mean, on paper my choice was either to leave or to remain in a politically unstable shithole. But even if it wasn't, I can't say that I'd still have stayed behind.
TRIAT
Even if you're being treated like you shouldn't be here? Or that you should be grateful? It's the last chance to turn around, you know. You could join up with the Gallente. They love us.
SISPUR
Even despite all that, no. I still want to go in. I don't know anybody in Minmatar space, and I'm certainly reminded of that on a regular basis, but I still feel like I know, if not the people, then the nation itself. You know?
TRIAT nods to ANNES and grins
TRIAT
He's certainly gotten to know the people.
ANNES
That one occasion aside, I don't even have the background that you guys have. All I've ever known is that I was destined to live in Ammatar space, growing up as part of a system that had little to do with the Minmatar and everything to do with the Amarr. And to be honest, even if I'm treated like a freak, for the first time in my life I feel like I'm somewhere I belong. It's not that I think these people wanted me in their lives, but it's ... it's clear they needed something. There was a gap, there was this dark, raw opening where the people of my tribe were torn from the body of the Minmatar all those years ago, and the remainder of that body cannot rest until we're rejoined. If there's an adjustment period, and there will be, and if there's pain, and there'll certainly be plenty of that before we start to heal at last, then that's how it has to be. I have to accept that, and play my part in the healing the best I can.
ANNES looks at TRIAT
ANNES
Even if you left of your own accord - as a nation, I mean - and although you personally may be returning for your own reasons, I think you're partly brought back by the same force that pulled me in.
TRIAT
By being part of something greater? Yeah. Could be right. Some greater whole. Something outside ourselves.
SISPUR
And something we can be proud of, something that stands for the same things we do as individuals.
ANNES
And lets us stand for something, not merely what we represent but who we are.
TRIAT raises his glass, as does SISPUR and ANNES
ALL say, To Matar!
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
Let me tell you about the mad man and the wonders he performs.
My name is Alder Brenean. I am one of the aides to His Royal Highness, an Heir to the throne of the Amarr Empire, beloved charge and leader of his fiefdom, Aritcio Kor-Azor.
I have not been doing this job for long and already it is a marvel beyond anything I had imagined. I do not sleep much. I eat at irregular hours. I hold conversations - brief, fleeting words, and of a servile nature, but still spoken out loud and answered - with men who operate at the highest level of government, and with men who operate only in the shadows.
My lord has not always been loved. There was a time where he was considered merely a shrewd politician, fitter to rise than to rule. There was also a time where he had ruled so terribly, and done such awful things, that the people rose against him. A religious man intervened, a Speaker of Truths, and he saved my lord, but for such a price that I cannot speak of.
When he returned to his duties he was a new man. He was also a kind man, one who thought very hard about the lives of his subjects and how to better them. He has been on that mission ever since: To improve the lives of the people who serve him and whom, he strongly emphasizes, he serves in turn.
Part of that rejuvenation was to bring on a new group of people, ones who could help him rule his heirdom in the most humane, efficient way possible. I am one of his new recruits. I took my exams, and without divulging how I did on them, I can attest that I did not fail in my duties.
When I was interviewed the lord asked me whether I was faithful. I said I was. He asked me whether I was faithful to the people, the ruler, or my lord God. I said that as far as I was concerned, these three were indistinguishable. He smiled, for the first time in our interview. A day later I was brought on.
***
One of the ongoing missions begun by my lord is to travel around his kingdom, both to familiarize himself with his people - and them with him - and to ensure their lives meet the standards he has set for a Kor-Azor person. This applies equally to Holder and Commoner. It even extends to slaves, whom my lord believes are no less worthy, in their way, than the people they serve. In this he is assisted by a cadre of able people among whom I proudly count myself. I am trusted with secrets, and I believe my lord sees something in me that I may not see myself, for he routinely has me on hand in meetings of a most delicate nature. He does not ask my opinion, but he does enquire of my analysis on certain court matters. I suspect he may find my perspective of some use, unfettered as it is by actual experience with political intrigue.
Our agents had determined that the subjects on a particular planet in my lord's kingdom were ... not fomenting rebellion or anything of that sort, but certainly murmuring in increasing unrest. This had not, our agents stressed, been reported nor acknowledged in any official capacity, and thus my lord would have to be careful of political repercussions if he were to present himself as a peacemaker.
The main problem with this planet, they explained - and one of the factors in the unrest of its people - was the political machinations inherent in its rule. The people were governed by several lords - Holders all, of course - each of whom in turn owed their allegiance to a continental overseer. Those overlords served under a planetary representative, who in turn filed regular reports directly to my lord and master. We noted that in his recent reports there had been no mention of any trouble.
This setup of governance was not the typical one in our Empire, and had been put in place long before my lord's ascension to heirdom. Not only was it tied down with strings that would prove costly to cut, but the planet's economy was so enmeshed in labyrinthine pacts by the ruling body that were my lord to intervene in a lawful and justifiable way, it would be a long time before we could even hope to wrest control of the planet over to us. This struck me as a strange state of affairs, but my lord explained that it was in fact a common one, and that the Heirs, even with their ecclesial authority, did not have as much secular power as they liked to pretend. He added that despite this state of affairs and our agents' reports of planetary issues, we should not necessarily assume that there would be trouble. Many of the most highly complex, politically sensitive problems of our age could be solved with a simple, elegant solution that more often than not did not tackle the problem head-on, but instead caused it to cease to exist. All one needed to do was find the right angle, and to act decisively, with the solution clear in one's mind. Never waver, he said, once you know what you need to do, and never lose heart.
***
We arrived in terrible weather. The space elevators, secure thought they might be, made me nauseous. It wasn't merely the travel - though the occasional sense of sideways pressure never failed to remind me that we were swaying in midair halfway between the earth and the stars - but the idea of traveling back from the skies and down to solid ground. There are people, and I know many of them, who prefer to stay on solid ground all their lives, making it the bedrock of their faith. I cannot do this. To me, ascension is literal; I feel that to be closer to God, Man needs to rise to meet Him. For some this might be a metaphysical ascension, for others a physical one. But to descend again, into a strange place where I would meet people who lived their entire lives out of preference under what they saw as a closed-off, threatening, solid metal sky - that descent would truly put me among strangers to my faith.
My lord arrived to great fanfare, none of it of his own making. Speeches were expected and given, and we took a few days merely to travel between areas, visiting different locales and gauging the crowds' reactions to my lord's presence as much as his words. It became clear, through the murmurs and our hushed listening, that they did not want him here. They were receptive to his presence, which sounds contradictory to their standoffish reception but was not a surprise. To them he did not represent hope - and it was clear these people needed more hope - but merely another leadership figure in a long line that grew ever more threatening and unpopular the higher up they looked at it; and the fact that he was speaking to them with a message of positivity merely made him a novelty. Or, in some of the more hostile areas, a politician and a liar.
Nevertheless we sensed an openness, a subdued willingness to hear what he had to say. The people turned up in droves, and as much as they might not believe in my lord's words or what he stood for, they listened attentively to what he said.
I must add that the continental overseers did not quite follow suit. For every word of praise or support my lord spoke to the masses, the leaders, in turn, spoke a subtly negative one of stilted progress; or, even worse, they spoke not at all. Before too long it had become clear that they were very happy with this situation and had no intention of allowing my lord - the presumption these people had! - of allowing my lord to intervene, no matter how unstable and unpleasant the life on this planet had become for the poor commoners.
Thus the first few days and nights passed. I prayed in the evenings while my lord met with his private councilors. Many of them arrived at his quarters, spoke briefly, then left for parts unknown.
Eventually he knocked on my door and informed me that the next part of our journey here would commence. The time for speeches was over and the time for inspection had begun. If I had not known my lord's ways as well as I do, I would have thought of him in much the same terms as the poor, earth-bound people on this planet: As a politician, who, having spread his prattle, now intended to make a few symbolic appearances in mock fellowship with the locals. It was a rote item of schedule for many politicians in all parts of the world.
My lord, however, had his own reasons for ambling down this well-trodden path. The public appearances required neither his presence of mind nor his oratory faculties. He could attend, no matter how tired and worn, and have the brunt of the effort undertaken by those he was visiting. And at night, when no one saw, he could undertake the true purpose of this part of our mission.
***
The true measure of a people is not the attitude they have towards their leaders or visiting dignitaries, no more than you can judge children by how they speak to their parents or guests of the house. Those whose minds represent the truth of their selves will have the sense to keep up their masks at all times, or at least maintain proper decorum, and those who cannot even do that are usually too crazy to be useful as barometers of temper and mood. If you want to see how children truly feel, don't look at the way they behave towards their parents; spy on them and find out how they treat their siblings. You may have to wait until there is a crisis, something that puts pressure on the children to interact with each other, but then you'll surely see it: Who pushes their brothers into a corner, and who embraces them.
Our people went out into the night to find out these things, and my lord did the same.
I can not think of any politician or ruler who does this. Even if they tried, I cannot imagine any who could do it to their advantage. It takes an extraordinary degree of precision, finesse, insight and ability to react to go out there into the open and be amongst people as if they were your own.
They would come in during the mornings, tired and worn, and confer with each other on the night's progress. My lord wore his protective gear, of course; morph fields that blocked him from sight and identification, and permeation-proof lightweight armor that would protect him from direct assault. He remained partially vulnerable to natural disasters - floods, fires and building collapses - but he took care with those, he said, and did not put himself at undue risk. My lord routinely did this on the trips he went on, and while I will admit that at first it gave me grave suspicions - I have never quite trusted those stories of high-borns going out in disguise among the public, suspecting as I do that their disguises were highly transparent and that their social explorations were carefully steered by their retinue - I soon noted that he had a skill for it, and a Commoner's instincts for survival, that served him well. He had never been found out.
I had always had my suspicions about my lord's nightly endeavors, and that they might be about more than merely sizing up the temperament of the local populace, but I was shocked when I saw him stumble in one morning, leaning against walls and clearly having a difficult time with movement. When I asked him whether I could be of assistance, he let out a little laugh and asked me to help him out of his armor. I did, and gasped when I saw his back.
Something had fallen on him, hard enough to rupture the armor's defenses, and it would likely have left bruises had there been any unblemished skin to affect. My lord's back was burnt and scarred, as if he had walked through the hellfires themselves. I asked whether he needed the services of a doctor, at which he let out a wheezing laugh and declined my offer. He had, he said, suffered the services of the doctors in the past. These days he preferred to let his own body rebuild itself
His hands and feet were sore, too, reddened and worn, but the gloves and boots he'd worn had luckily taken most of the brunt. They were gone, he said, their tatters left somewhere on the streets of this strange earth.
He did not explain the burns, but merely said they had taught him all he needed to know about inhabitants on this planet. They were not a distant or rebellious people, he added, but they needed a proper rallying cry, along with someone they could trust to shout it from above.
I did check the next morning's news and discovered there had been a massive fire the night before. Volunteers had arrived from all over in an attempt to extinguish it and save innocent people from harm. Pursuant to this I combed through any available articles for a mention of mysterious strangers, or a vision of some blurred corner in a picture of the fire, but found none.
Some might have felt he was wasting his time - not in saving people, which is never a waste, but in spending his time among them like this. But he has told me often that the big picture is made out of many small details. You must be among your own people, he says. You must. If you lose that connection, you stand to lose so much more.
He had his dreams that night; the ones where he screams. But in the morning he was very calm.
***
The penultimate part of our journey was a meeting with its planetary leader. As I explained, the economic and political situations on this planet were very much intertwined. Old independence agreements, most of a financial bent, had held off any direct changes brought from the outside, while the extremely complex interplay between various internal forces on the planet meant there was no way for my lord or anyone else even to squeeze in among the cracks as a private investor and start working any change in that manner. The intermediary continental leaders had given us no support. Unless we received backing from the planetary representative, we were going to have a hard time enacting any change in this place, no matter how positive.
The representative had invited us to his office, at the penthouse on one of the tallest buildings on the planet, but my lord politely declined the offer. Instead he asked that the meeting be held in his own quarters, which had been furnished with his personal belongings and were spacious enough to hold a platoon of soldiers. The representative was quick to accept this counteroffer, sending us a brief acknowledgment to that effect. I suggested to my lord that the man was eager to see us gone from here, and he nodded, adding that before this happened, changes would have to be enacted. He asked that I remain in the meeting as a secretary of events and a representative. When I enquired whether it would not behoove my lord to present a show of strength - a small cadre of stronger men to better face off the team our representative was likely to bring - he gave me a brief and not very humorous smile, and said that if his suspicions about the man and his persons were correct, he would not be bringing anyone at all.
I could scarcely imagine anyone insulting my lord like that, but I agreed to his wishes.
Shortly before the visit I went through the room to ensure nothing was out of place. I aligned my lord's copies of the Pax Amarria, and his selections of ancient scriptures. The banners were hung in the appropriate order, while the ceremonial weapons were kept, at my lord's request, well at the back. Subtly hidden among them was the Khumaak, a weapon not many Amarrians would dare keep in their possession. I had always had my own sentiments about my lord's reasons for keeping a copy of this bloodied relic among the more proper holy ones of our own people, but what happened later that evening cast its presence in a new and disconcerting light.
The administrator came in and was immediately hostile to my lord's suggestions. He said, in response to my lord's worries on the increased instability in various regions, that he did not intend to let anything disturb his rule of this planet. Leaving aside the dictatorial attitude reflected in that comment, it was a vicious and grossly inappropriate jab at my lord's attempts to improve the life of his constituents. I had seen some of the intermediate members of the heirdom act like this after my lord returned to his duties, though thankfully they were growing ever rarer.
My lord asked if the governor simply intended to quell any opposition from the commoners, and the governor said that he would. When my lord added that the Caldari governing board had thought the same, and that it had not turned out so well for them, the governor grew visibly flustered. He cast me a look - I had sat in a corner of the office and barely been noticed by the man - that seemed to imply I was responsible for my lord's approach, as if I were one of the poor Commoners he ruled and clearly disdained.
The governor told my lord that, in all honesty, life on this planet was going to continue unaltered, and that while my lord's benevolent probings - he actually used those words - were certainly laudable and guaranteed to carry favor with our newly elected Empress, they were far removed from the political reality of the world this governor ruled. There would be no change while he was in office, and given his political ties with others on this planet, there would be no way that my lord could attempt to oust him, no matter how many of those filthy little people - that language again - he brought to bear.
I was speechless by the man's audacity. My lord, on the other hand, calmly got up, walked over to the governor and, smiling wide, extended his hand. It took the governor a few moments before he extended his own and smiled back. My lord said that the situation was clear and that he truly did appreciate the situation: That as long as the governor was in power, no matter what instability reigned, things would go on as before. He understood this, he said.
The governor made as if to speak, but my lord continued, saying that how unfortunate it was to have any unrest, tend as it did to spiral completely out of control. He added that despite this, and despite the fact that this unrest, once it did spiral out of control, would inevitably end up at the shores of his own royal offices, he did understand the governor's way of thinking. After all, he said at last, he had once held much the same viewpoint.
The governor fairly yanked his hand out of my lord's grasp, but maintained his smile.
My lord turned to me and politely asked me to leave.
I was surprised by this, but said nothing and got up from my chair. I walked quietly by the walls and towards the exit. My lord followed and met me at the doors, opening them for me. I gave him a quizzical look
"This is the part where I play the Devil," he said, with such a mixture of regret and relief as I have never heard from a man.
He saw me through and closed the doors after me.
Not knowing what else to do, I stood outside the room, waiting for the meeting to be over. I did not spy or eavesdrop; I could not have even if I had tried, for the walls and the doors were made of thick material. After a brief while, though, I heard raised voices, mostly from the governor. The voices rose until one of them became a shout. It was punctured by several muffled thuds, rising to a near-shriek, before falling quiet altogether.
The door opened a crack, and when I saw my lord's face peer through, I let out a long exhale that I had not even realized I'd been holding in. His hair glistened with sweat, though he seemed to have thoroughly wiped it off his face; and his eyes were wide open. He asked me to call up certain members of his retinue, for he had something they needed to take care of.
This I did. I did not mention to them or anyone else that I had seen the Khumaak lying on the ground behind my lord.
***
The day after, I saw a glut of news reports, all of them detailing the governor's disappearance. It seemed that his p.v. had malfunctioned while in mid-flight and crashed into the ocean, hours before his scheduled meeting with my lord. The news included a quote from Heir Aritcio Kor-Azor where he exclaimed not only his profound sadness over the loss of this great man, but his disappointment that their meeting on the political and economical future of the planet had not taken place. The papers went on to quote my lord in that he hoped he could still hold meetings with the various overseers of individual continental entities, and that these meetings could conclude with a better outcome than this terrible, terrible occurrence.
When my lord embarked on the last series of journeys over this strange earth, his speeches received a much better reaction from the workforce. This might have been helped by recent concessions announced by the continental leaders, who had decided to embark on massive audits of commoner health, safety and economic troubles. Unfortunately, this sudden development meant they were all too busy to meet with my lord, but he took it with his usual good humor, and we started preparing for our departure.
***
As we were travelling back up to the waiting ship, in that hellish elevator, my lord turned to me and said that the lives of everyone on this planet would be improved. He asked if I was happy with this.
I understood the question that he had asked, and the one he had not. I said that yes, I was.
He smiled and said that was good; for he wanted everyone to be happy.
I believed him.
We rose to the skies.
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Haatakan Oiritsuu - once-CEO of Kaalakiota and now deposed, in exile, on a barren snowy estate long from the action of the Caldari State politics - held a living plant in her hand, took out the sharpest knife she had, and with careful but precise motions sliced the thing open lengthwise, exposing its layers all the way to the green of its deepest, glistening core. She held the plant over a small pile of peat, squeezing out little drops from its stem. With nimble fingers she drained it dry, running her hands over every inch of its body until there was nothing left but a shredded husk.
The peat, already enriched with nutrients and chemical concoctions, had needed more. All manner of reactions were ongoing in its soil, but in order to sustain them, proper fuel was needed. Dead liquids only went so far; in the end, as was always the case, a sacrifice had been necessary to feed the hungry earth. The best nourishments for the fresh plants in this greenhouse came from the ones that had grown here before. And for every flower, there came a time for the bloom, and a time for the cut.
***
She had always loved being in nature, particularly the kind that lent itself to quiet, long-term observation. Haatakan had grown up in a hard family: not a rough one, and not a hand ever laid on her, but an environment where everything you did and everything you said would be remembered, and judged, and brought up if the occasion required. She had a tiny garden spot behind the house that she tended when everything got too much, and it was there she discovered that flowers were not only beautiful - one must never lose sight of the beauty in life - but how delightfully they responded to control; how carefully they must be tended and grown.
She had made herself the child's promise that one day she would be super powerful and mega rich, a million times more wealthy than the second-wealthiest man in the world, and on the day that she made it - for she surely would - she would spend the rest of her life in a garden of her own, far away from people, tending to the quietly growing plants.
That was her unit of power: a garden. Then she grew up, and she became very powerful indeed, and very rich, and she never forgot about it. When she had this place built, as much in the middle of a wilderness as she could make it without offending the people of the State, she added a greenhouse easily half the size of the entire palace. She spent most of her time there, patiently waiting for the world to catch up with her plans.
***
Most of the plants in the greenhouse were flowering ones. Haatakan chose one of the most beautiful - a lovely lilicae possessing a thick, stiff stem topped with a pristine, bulblike blossom - and uprooted it, placing it carefully in a temporary pot on her table. There were machines that could do this, little nanoids that would turn the earth around the roots into slippery oil, and pressure-sensitive metal arms that could then pull out the flower without dislodging a single one of its tendrils, leaves or petals. Haatakan didn't believe in those. The moment you gave your life over to automation - to any outside process, really - you invited a quiet disaster.
She had invited disaster, but it had not been quiet.
She picked up her knife. Its blade was short, like that of a scalpel, and sharp enough to cut through practically anything that lived. With the lilicae standing tall in front of her, she got to work on its flower. It had blossomed but not yet bloomed, so the petals were still closed in, like a shy maiden on her wedding night.
She put the tip of the blade against one of the petals and rested it there. It was so sharp that it began to slide in, ever so slightly. She pushed down the blade in a slanted fashion, then lifted it back up and slid it down the other way, as if carving the first two sides of a triangle. Instead of cutting the third and removing a piece from the petal, she used the tip to tease out the top part of the cut, then folded it down like a flap, leaving a little window into the center of the flower. The flap's edges curved slightly inward, and on each of them she traced a very faint line, topping off the carving with a single faint press of the knife tip to the top of the cut, leaving the tiniest of dimples.
After cleaning the knife with a purple silk cloth she did this again, to the same petal, cutting and teasing and shaping the triangular flaps until the petal looked more like a well-traversed honeycomb than anything grown out of nature. When she was finished she moved on to the next, and the next. Eventually the flower had been completely pierced and cut, and daylight shone through its gaping wounds.
Haatakan slid the knife down alongside its stem and sliced off every leaf, leaving the plant naked as day. For every tiny join where a leaf had clung to the stem, she inserted the knife tip deep into its fresh wound and gored out a small hole, removing even the final possibility of more growth. Little trickles of opaque sap ran down, over her fingers. When at last the cuts would stop bleeding, the area around them would wrinkle and change color, turning a little darker and lending the flower a marvelous, damaged hue.
It was a cruel way to create beauty. But anything this lovely could not be allowed to stand unspoiled.
***
At one time she was one of the world's most powerful CEOs. She ruled one of New Eden's superpowers, sharing the hot seat with seven of her countrymen. They were feared, as all good leaders must be, but Haatakan had not realized how extensively they were hated.
For the extent of her professional career she had closely followed the Caldari system of governance, where found good use for her indurate upbringing. People knew their place. Anyone who acted up - or worse, failed - would be dealt with, calmly and professionally, and whatever threat they posed to the delicate equilibrium would be eliminated.
***
She uprooted another plant and brought it over to the polycarb glas sink, which she had filled with water. The plant was bottom heavy, composed as it was of a thick knot of roots the size of a closed fist, from which rose single long stem with leafy sprouts, and a large, bulbous flower reminiscent of the lilicae.
Haatakan placed the plant into the sink, where it sank to the bottom, to slowly drown.
This plant, which was renowned for the ferocity with which it drained its earth, would live remarkably long underwater. It would suck in as much of its surroundings as it could, becoming bloated and heavy. While it would retain the framework of its shape until the very last, each part - the flower, the leaves, the stem and even the roots - would grow to several times its original size, engorged on the water the plant would never stop ingesting even as it died. The plant would grow large and beautiful, with a glistening sheen on its turgid surface. In time, the sheen would take on an oily nature as cellular walls began to break and release the plant's essential fluids out onto its surface.
***
A revolution began, one she expected to be quelled without too much trouble. She had become complacent; not weak but laggard, lumbering like a giant tired of striding over the land, no longer bothering to look where he walked, and taking the smallest of satisfaction in the panicked screams below.
If enough people showed fear, she reasoned, then she must be feared, for she saw none who seemed fearless. This, she found to her cost, did not mean they didn't exist, merely that they had the good sense not to step out in the open. Until they did, breaking through all the walls she'd erected, and breaking everything else along the way.
***
In one section of her greenhouse she had a small tree, still in its pot. It was about her height, with a branchless trunk that looked weedy and pale, and a small crown of leaves that drooped in the greenhouse heat.
Its trunk was enveloped by a thin, heavily-leafed vine that looked in perfect health. This vine, which was a parasite, hung on to the tree by a million microscopic needles forced into the tree's trunk. A third of those needles would have little hooks on the end, the better to maintain their grasp; another third would be slowly and gently sucking out nutrients when they were needed; and the last third would be injecting something instead: a chemical, the likes of which had not yet been properly synthesized, that induced the tree to believe it was being fed with delicious, complex nutrients. The tree's own constant outstretching for food and nourishment would be curtailed, and with it all other processes, including the production of antibodies that might poison the parasite. So long as the tree thought it was being fed well, it didn't bother to do anything else but wait for the rest of its ever-shortening life to pass.
***
One of these demolition men was Tibus Heth, who rocketed into the limelight on a tornado of smoke and fire. He was a volatile man, an angry man, and Haatakan did not expect him or any of his plans to last a Caldarian day. Angry men were easily dealt with. But Heth had backing, and even when that backing seemed to disappear, he had a support system, overseen primarily by a very stable, very quiet man called Janus Bravour.
***
She looked in on a single large plant, one that had been growing in its large bed for quite some time. She had recently placed a number of smaller plants, all sorts of varieties, dotted around this one in close enough proximity that their roots had begun to touch it.
This plant, a particularly aggressive rosoid variant, had sensed their presence. Even though they weren't weeds and were of no immediate threat in this rich ground - which had been fortified with the hungry peat of her own creation, and seemed to enhance the aggressive properties of some of her more contentious flowers - it had began to extend its thorns and channel all its energy into keeping off every other plant in the plot. This had left its stem shriveled, likely to break at the least little touch, and its petals so thin and weak that they were not merely translucent; Haatakan could see the thin veins in the flesh beneath the surface. If she stood there long enough she fashioned she could see the plant's vital liquids being pumped and forth, as if from a photosynthetic heart beating its last before the collapse. She would wait until it was spent, then deadhead it, and place its frail little flower with the others she kept in a small bowl in the foyer of her palace.
***
Janus, she thought, would have the long-term plans. He certainly seemed the antithesis of Heth, and that was dangerous, for the men who believe they know better than others - and are capable of acting on it - will eventually overtake the others' responsibilities. It was clear that Janus formed an integral part of the framework that held Tibus Heth in place. Heth himself was still the main threat to Haatakan and the other seven dispossessed CEOs, for he was the instigator and enforcer of the new State, while Janus sat quietly in the background, oiling the gears and ensuring they turned.
Until Heth made his latest move: a reorganization of the Caldari State, a return to the meritocracy they had been founded on. A bureaucratic move, no matter how heavily couched in revolutionary terms. A bold plan, clearly intended to bolster Heth's fragile standing with the State's citizens, and one that relied on something more than fire and fury to work. It needed a quiet mind to minister, lest it fail colossally.
And thus Janus Bravour became, overnight, ground zero for every revenge plan in operation.
***
These two plants, now, had been growing for a while, but not as long as one might imagine if one looked at their towering stems.
Haatakan stroked her fingers over them. Each was nearly as tall as a small tree. She'd had to put their shared pot down on the ground. They were rare, small vitis variants, not inclined to climb walls or do much at all unless given the right impetus.
All that was needed, really, was another plant of the exact same sort. The vine's nature was to rise over its surroundings, and when something began to claim its place, it would do its utmost to reassert its dominance. Not only did it nearly triple its own growth rate, but it would attempt to entwine itself around its rival, keeping it down and stealing a rise on its laurels. If the rival was another vine, it would do the same; and if the two were carefully trimmed and guided, they would encircle each other like strands of DNA, rising to the ceiling in a quiet ballet of mutual competition until, at last, they died from exhaustion. Their lifeless stalks would remain, as monuments to their folly, and with care could be preserved, by drying and lamination, still stuck in each other's snake embrace until the end of time.
***
Haatakan had watched the news. Janus Bravour had suddenly been taken ill and was now in hospital, in some manner of serious condition.
Truth be told, she had been neglecting this greenhouse for months. After Tibus Heth had come in and thrown her out into the cold, she'd spent a lot of her time brooding in her palace. She was resigned to staying here. The terms of Heth's dictated that her safety was guaranteed only on her own grounds. If she left and headed to the metropolis of Khyyrth, the citizens would recognize and kill her; and if she fled into the forest, Heth's own agents would either remove her from this earth, or the cold and the woods would simply swallow her whole.
So she had retreated to her ivory tower, and remained there inert, staring at the walls. Her initial rage had subsided and given way to resigned depression, bringing back memories of all those years ago when she'd been at the mercy of other forces, paternal in name but dictatorial in nature, and had wished nothing more than to be free of them. The gardens had taught her otherwise - freedom was achieved by working around your restraints, for if you waited for them to be removed, you were merely asking for another master of your fate to step forth - but she ignored its lessons, and let herself grind to a standstill.
Janus's fate, whatever it truly was, had changed that. The wheels moved again. Heth was alone and unsupported. Despite the man's volatility, he was a brilliant military strategist; and despite his avowed morality he was, she believed, an unscrupulous one. A military man would take extreme measures to conquer his enemies; so long as his cause, or his belief in that cause, remained just and honest, the ethics and justifiability of his methods did not matter.
Heth understood power on a visceral level, far more so than most of the people he had deposed. As much as she despised him, she could not deny this fact. Right now, with Janus out of the picture and the CEOs mounting their subsequent counter-revolution, he desperately needed someone who knew the intricacies of the highest political level in State and was willing to do what was necessary to achieve her goals; someone who had her hands on the strings and was willing to pull them.
The speakers in the greenhouse rang out with a long, sonorous note.
She had a guest.
***
A single fruit hung like a pendulum from a drooping branch of the plant. The fruit was ripe, ready for picking. It was beautiful, also, and stood in stark contrast to the plant that had born it, whose body was tired and worn.
This one plant could and had been induced to put all of its effort into the fruit of its creation, diverting every nutrient and scrap of energy it picked up through it questing roots and channeling them directly into the soft, soft pulp. Once the fruit was ready, the plant would likely die.
Haatakan grabbed it on her way out and took a juicy bite.
***
Her guest held a small monitor on which Tibus Heth's face was visible. Haatakan ignored him and focused on the woman who had entered her palace.
"I know you," Haatakan said.
"Indeed you do," Tibus Heth said through his monitor. "She's the one who brought you here."
"Last time I saw you, I was having terms dictated to me," Haatakan said to the woman. "You asked me if I knew how much the people hated me. And you said that if I tried to escape, into the woods, I would be lost forever." She walked up close to the woman and was pleased to see the merest glisten of sweat in her combed-back hair. "People do get lost forever here, you know. People who chose the wrong road."
"Janus Bravour is dead," Tibus Heth said from waist level. Haatakan stepped back and looked at him at last.
"I know," she said. "And now you're going to fall."
"Not if you can help it." Tibus leaned in closer on the screen. "I need your help, Ms. Oiritsuu."
"You, the destroyer of the State, need the help of an old lady out in the country? My goodness, how the mighty have fallen."
"The other megacorps are conspiring against me. All seven of them. But not you. I've had my agents thoroughly vet every one of you people, and Kaalakiota, in which you still have your witchy little tendrils, stayed out of the whole thing. Why?"
"For the same reason I imagine you sent this particular messenger to me. We owe our allegiance to a cause, and that cause is ourselves and our view of the world. Everything else is secondary. And every alliance is an opportunity of chance, nothing more."
"I work for the State," Heth said.
"Funny. I used to say the same thing, when I was on top."
"So you refuse? You want SuVee and the rest to rise again?"
"Certainly not. There is no reason for those idiots to regrasp the reins of power. But you need to understand, Heth, that I don't see any pressing reason to help you stay on top. I will still be stuck here, tending to my plants, watching you take this great State to pieces."
"We can work out the terms. You didn't make it this far without an ability to negotiate," Heth said. He leaned back from the screen, and Haatakan saw he was sitting in a chair, likely in the office he'd taken from one of the CEOs. "I think you see plenty of reason to make this happen. I think you're lying, and that you're snapping at the chance."
Haatakan leaned her head to one side. "Do you think I killed Janus?" she said.
The question did not seem to catch Heth off guard, which surprised her. "In all honesty?" he said. "I don't know. You might have. If I know you and your scheming ways, this conversation is merely a point in a long, branching plan you'll have made, one that ends with you being back in power to some degree. I'm alright with that. I've dealt with less trustworthy people than you."
She gave him a long look. At last she said, "We might be able to make something out of this."
Heth grinned, and she grinned back, like two carnivores passing by over a meal.
She had been planning, ever since Janus died. And her renewed time in the greenhouse had taught her to mix that roaring hunger for power that resided in her deepest, unconscious core with the learned quietness of thought that floated up in her conscious mind.
"How would you do this, if you manage it at all?" Heth asked.
There would be seven forces to neutralize, each one of which had some sort of vice. Everyone had a vice. It was to the eternal frustration of Haatakan's enemies that hers was merely a twisted sort of gardening.
You could plan with groups of people, or with the currents passing through society - abstract plans, often, but workable - but individuals were a different matter. Especially mercurial ones such as Heth, who remained a mystery to her. The best option with those kinds of people was to get close and stay close. Study. Presumption had cast her here, and understanding would eventually get her out. That, and patience.
But the others, whom she'd known for so long; they were no mystery. They could be worked on. She'd been practicing.
"Leave it to me," she said, reached out and turned off the screen. She returned her gaze to the Provist woman holding the dead monitor, whose eyes were glazed over with utter dread. "Now, my dear. We're going to have to deal with you."
From a small pocket at the back of her dress, she withdrew the little knife with the very sharp blade, and concealed it in her hand.
There was a large compost heap that needed feeding, and flowers that needed their nutrients. One had to plan for the future.
And, in fact, all her practice in the greenhouse had done more than prepare her for the oncoming little wars. She felt as if she had been engaging in self-purification, cutting away the dead limbs that had grown out of the trunk of her old self. She was cleansing herself and casting off the refuse - not her sins, for those follow as surely as age, but the old mindsets and assumptions - and preparing for a new chapter of her life. To bloom, in this wild new earth.
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Through the years, the Caldari State’s reigning ideology has been broadly defined by its emphasis on hard work, sacrifice, and the welfare of the collective over the welfare of the individual. Central to the Caldari mindset is the assumption that people work better when motivated by a feeling of contribution to a greater good, but even more important is the idea that people naturally gravitate toward the sphere of craft they are best suited for, as well as the position they should occupy within it. How has this philosophy been shaped over the tumultuous lifetime of the Caldari nation, though, and where does it stand today?
In the early days of Caldari-Gallente relations, when the two nations had just come into contact with each other, the somewhat unusual structure of Caldari government was explicitly set up so that no one person could wrest power from the council. The notion of individuality, so prized by the Gallente, tended to be viewed by the Caldari as little more than selfish blindness to the grander scheme of things, and was frowned upon by the vast majority of their leaders as well as the industrious masses that made up the civilian populace. After the first Gallente-Caldari war, the Chief Executive Panel – the corporate heads making up the Caldari State’s ruling body – went even further with this ideology, soon enough taking their seat as polar opposites to their hated nemeses. While it may seem tempting to ascribe this to the ideological rubberbanding sometimes experienced by newly independent states, there is a great deal of historical data that suggests that even as far back as the time of the Raata-Oryioni empire thousands of years ago, the people who would later become the Caldari were already highly collectivistic in outlook and action.
For the newly-at-peace Caldari State, however – a nation bruised and bleeding from a lengthy war – things took on a different tenor. In the sudden absence of a unifying enemy, the people who at that time made up the Chief Executive Panel found themselves gradually turning their attentions to each other. Internal competition between the eight ruling corporations increased. Suggested initiatives and reforms usually served to somehow pad the coffers of the corporation that came up with them, ideally at the expense of their most direct competitors. While competence and devotion to the State were still held in overt esteem to as great a degree as ever – and, indeed, used as religiously in the nation’s propaganda as they are today – the foundations these values were built on had begun to subtly slide.
As time passed, the entrenchment of those in power, as well as their fierce devotion to their internal competition, began to have trickle-down effects on the Big Eight’s top tiers. Believing their own modes of governance and management preferable to whatever successors the Board of Directors would offer up, the CEOs of the megacorporations began to pull the strings behind the scenes, making sure their own protégés ascended to positions where they would take over the reins when the time came. They also made sure that key positions within the corporate hierarchies were occupied by people whose goals and opinions coincided with their own. Thus, slowly but surely, covert dynasties began to snake their tendrils around the Caldari State’s power structures.
By the time the capsuleers started making waves on the world scene, the State’s hierarchies were crowded with individuals who had come by their positions through the mendacious maneuverings of well-placed superiors, and this played a significant role in the sharp economic downturn faced by the Caldari State. Each of New Eden’s four major nations had suffered some form of economic setback in the wake of the ultra-rich capsuleer class’s meteoric rise, but the Caldari, due to their set-in-stone mentality and reluctance to adapt, were perhaps the hardest hit. Unemployment skyrocketed. Goods and services rose in price. Imports and exports declined.
Sensing the shift in worldwide power, the Chief Executive Panel responded by coocooning themselves from the outside world and taking up isolationist policies. Diplomatic relations, never a strong part of the Caldari political skillset, became almost nonexistent. Even in the wake of such disasters as the Protein Delicacy incident (where Caldari-manufactured luncheonette foods were found to cause mental deficiencies in Gallente schoolchildren) or the Insorum incident (where a chemical compound capable of reversing the effects of one of Amarr’s most relied-upon slave drugs was leaked from a Caldari biolab), the State’s diplomats did little to placate those aggrieved by their mistakes. The Caldari nation was as mighty as ever, but it was hardening up from the inside out. It would take a major change to shake things up, and in YC 110 that change came in the form of a radical new leader, Tibus Heth.
Finding nepotism-spawned inefficiency all over the State, Heth instigated several reforms intended to bring Caldari back to its roots as a meritocratic society. To this end, he employed his most trusted director, Janus Bravour, to set in motion a series of initiatives that would root out those undeserving of their positions and install in their stead people who had truly earned the right to be there. With the proper gears meshing in unison, the State would once again take its rightful role as a trampling juggernaut of commercial, industrial and military might.
Heth’s reforms reached into every sector of corporate activity. He began by confiscating the wealth of mid- to high-tier managers and executives all across the State and redistributing it among the lowest rungs of the workforce. He created programs that made sure people received adequate compensation for hard work, in the form of annual leave and early retirement. He greatly increased funding for education and re-education initiatives. He promoted worker summits wherein individual ingenuity was given an outlet. The main goal: to make sure that no matter which rung on the ladder a person occupies, they stand at least a fighting chance of making it to the rung above them – provided they truly deserve it.
Under the new system, social status is no obstacle to advancement. Within ten years’ time, over half of the State’s schools will be equipped with advanced screening methods for detecting unusual aptitude, so that those so gifted can be directed toward areas where their talent will do the most good. Institutions are being set up to give grants to armchair inventors and small business owners who never had the chance to take their ideas to a higher level. Government spies already are being disseminated among the ranks of the corporations and tasked with weeding out nepotism wherever they find it.
In the time since Heth took power a sizable number of citizens, believing the rule of a single man to contradict Caldari ideals, have left the country. The assumption among them has been that like the despots and dictators that litter history’s pages he would surround himself with a power clique and leave the rest of the nation blowing in the wind, eroding the nutritious soil of cultural values that had kept the State strong throughout its existence. The nationalistic bent of his policies and his military ruthlessness have also caused a degree of alarm, prompting some citizens to question (quietly, of course) how their morality and their national identity fit together in these latest and darkest times.
In the span since Heth’s inauguration, however, the turnaround in economic growth has been undeniable. Caldari have more money in their pockets. They are more secure about their retirement. People who under the old system would have found themselves forever excluded from certain positions now reside within those positions. The general feeling, on the streets and in the stations, is that for better or worse something great and grand is underway, that the previous system was ailing and outmoded, and that the New Meritocracy (as it has been dubbed by the press) is a return to form for a great nation shackled too long in the chains of favoritism. Averting their eyes from the darkness all around them, the Caldari people now for the first time in years set their sights on a brighter future.
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Day Seven
In the cold, hyperlit metal corridor, the two women faced one another at firing distance. Jeanelle, who'd brought them here, slowly lowered her hands to her hips, resting them on the handles of her guns. Skids, who'd kept them alive, kept her hands crossed behind her head, as if she planned to take a nap. She looked entirely unconcerned.
In one swift and silent motion, Jeanelle drew her guns, aimed at Skids and fired.
The deafening noise echoed through the corridor. In the aftermath of the muzzle flash, Skids stood with hands on her hips, an astonished expression on her face. She looked down at her body, in search of the vermillion stain, but before she could find one her eyes rolled back in her head, and she dropped to the floor.
Day One
They were in a meeting with a very nice man who spoke softly and had a face that was easily forgotten. This man, who had not given his name, told them that their team was one of many that qualified for the hunting of former Grand Admiral Anvent Eturrer.
Eturrer, or the Great Traitor as he was now known, had been instrumental in causing the Gallente to fumble their response to a mass invasion by hostile forces. As a result they had lost an entire planet to the Caldari, and had been forced into war on their outlying borders. Eturrer had disappeared right after his betrayal. The Gallente wanted him found.
Jeanelle, Skids, Kardeth and Asadir - Gallente, Caldari, Amarr and Minmatar respectively - had been called in. They were a merc team, one of many that worked in the corporate halo of 0.0 space. Their different backgrounds, national and corporate, allowed them a great flexibility in their operations, even if it made for the occasional bit of friction. Asadir was a tech head, excellent with machinery. Kardeth was a Wanderer, a clandestine subsection of the Speakers of Truth tasked with bringing the faith into the darkest of places. Skidochi was a supreme fighter, nimble and merciless, but her rebellious nature was in constant conflict with the guilt over her inability to properly serve the Caldari State. Jeanelle had a background in politics and entertainment, and a rather checkered past in her pursuit of happiness.
As it turned out, this past was proving surprisingly useful. One of the people Jeanelle had charmed in her passage was Uriam Kador, one of the Heirs to the Amarrian Royal Throne. The relationship was long since over, but Jeanelle had a way of making friends where she went and still had a lot of contacts in Kador's court. This was good, the nameless man said, because one of Eturrer's many possible hideouts was in Kador's part of space. The Gallente didn't know where, he said, and they certainly weren't going to risk any of their own people in these black ops stunts unless they had a very good reason to believe they'd get their man.
"Why not just have us extract Eturrer?" Kardeth asked.
That was not an option, the man said. Even if it turned out he was located there, their team would never get close to the man himself - he'd be too heavily guarded, and all they could hope for was reaching one of his co-conspirators - and any failed attempts to that end would drive him even deeper underground, ruining any chances the Gallente had of catching the villain at last. The team's task was the extraction of information, nothing more.
"Why do you think Jeanelle wouldn't just warn Kador instead?" Kardeth said, nodding his head at his visibly annoyed team mate.
They had a good track record, the man said. And besides, betrayal would mean they'd have Blaque's Black Eagles to deal with.
"Let me just add something to this," Jeanelle said, loosening something around her chest and standing up. She turned to Kardeth, glaring at him, and dropped her top.
"See that scar, running right between my breasts?" she said.
Kardeth, eyes wide, nodded wordlessly.
Jeanelle pulled the top up again and took her seat. "Kador's private persona is not the same as his public one. He gets excited. And he can't handle failure. I liked the people who worked for him, idealists who believe in hard work and loyalty, but I don't owe the man anything."
Skids said, "I've known you for years, but I don't remember that. Was it before we met?"
Jeanelle looked at her, then looked away. "Something like that."
Kardeth tried to rally. "Alright. Anyway, yeah, we'll do our best to triangulate Eturrer's position from whatever our sources reveal." Asadir snorted, and Jeanelle rolled her eyes. Skids, legs drawn up to her seat, said nothing.
The man thanked them for their time.
Day Two
They were gearing up, receiving shipments of equipment to their ships. Jeanelle and Skids were checking over the data.
Casually, Jeanelle said, "Everything all right?"
Skids was silent for a while, going over ammo schematics. She said, "Yeah, it's fine. I don't like working for the Gallente, though."
"I know. But it's a job like any other. Asadir hates it when we do Amarr jobs, too."
"It's not just that. Eturrer's treated like a hero, back on Caldari. I don't like the thought that we're going to ruin things for him."
"I think that it's unavoidable," Jeanelle said. "He called this over himself the moment he betrayed his fleet. They would never let him go."
She put her arm around Skids' shoulders and gave her a quick hug. "And besides, it's not like the Caldari would venerate you even if you skipped out on this mission. They've got strange ways of showing their appreciation. You've seen that before."
"I guess," Skids said. "Still don't like it."
Jeanelle nodded and went back to the schematics. "You'll be fine," she said.
"Jeanelle?"
"Yes?"
"What do you mean, I've seen it before?"
Jeanelle thought it over. "You come from one of the most rigid empires in the world, where people are kept locked in place their whole lives. And yet you now work for a mercenary crew. That really says it all, sweetie. Go to sleep."
Day Three
After having adamantly refused to use Jeanelle's contacts in Kador's court, Kardeth received information from his own people in the dark end of space. He brought it to the team, proud and boisterous, and they set up and headed there quick.
According to Kardeth's sources, their target was a small colony staffed with very religious people who had some information on Eturrer's passage. The inhabitants, Kardeth maintained, would undoubtedly respect his rather clandestine authority as a Wanderer and rend unto him any assistance he required in his hunt. They would arrive late, have a prayer session and a nice dinner, get some proper sleep, and sort out their business in the morning. When Jeanelle asked whether the colonists knew the real purpose for their visit, Kardeth merely grinned.
?
Day Four (or very late in Day Three)
The main street was empty, as befitted a late night in a religious colony. Light posts shone on the grey stone below.
But there was a rumble in the air, and a few of the posts started to tremble, their lights jittering and swaying.
Skids came first, her slim body racing down the street. Jeanelle followed, her ampler proportions and more decorative clothing slowing her pace.
Kardeth, who'd stayed behind to reason with his people, came last, his sandals beating a tattoo on the ground, and his face as stony as an icon. Behind him came an army of Amarrians screaming raw bloody murder. The team had certainly unearthed something, but once their real intentions were discovered the colonists had not been happy.
Asadir, who had waited for them onboard the ship and already started the launch pattern, laughed his ass off as they jumped onboard. As the control panel closed, a yelled conversation could be heard between him and Kardeth.
"Welcome to my world!"
"Shutup."
"How'd you like it on the Matar side!"
"Shutup."
"I got a Pax Amarria in my nightstand, in case yours got a little dirty!"
"Shutup."
Day Five
Jeanelle took over and sent out feelers to some of her own sources in the area. Kardeth, chastened, grudgingly and rather sheepishly allowed himself to be assigned tech prep duties instead. On one of his trips into the hardware section of the cargohold, he showed Asadir a list of the items they were going to use: simple, non-electric weapons that wouldn't show up on scanning or break at the worst possible moment. One of those items was a familiar one.
Asadir reached Jeanelle at her quarters. She did not seem surprised to see him.
"You know that Skids has a quickdraw implant," he said.
"Yes," she said.
"On your list is a miniature EMP bomb. You know what it does."
Jeanelle nodded.
"Are you just going for the quickdraw?" Asadir asked.
"No. I need you to mod the EMP, like you did in the Caldari space mission we did a while back. I need to run it twice."
Asadir stood there for a while, looking at her. Eventually he said, "You think we'll have to take this all the way."
"You've seen how she's getting. More sullen. Withdrawn. I don't thinks she's comfortable with this mission at all. I know she'll do it as well as she can, but there'll be a breaking point, and I don't want to have anyone get hurt."
"So you want the Dead Man's Switch."
"Yes. And I need you to do something else, too," Jeanelle said.
"Blanks for your gun."
"Yeah."
"I hate doing this to the child."
"Well," Jeanelle said, in a tone that indicated this conversation was over, "You know what alternatives we have. It's this, or end it for good."
Later in the day, a source sent back a coded message. It contained the locations of a colony that housed one of Eturrer's old lieutenants, a fellow traitor who'd eloped with him.
Asadir missed it, for he was stuck in the lab, working on the EMP device.
Day Six
They'd docked at another colony and been given permission to enter the place. It was still Amarr space, which meant that Asadir was, in his words, staying inside the ship on pain of death and religion and dumbasses. Kardeth stayed in as well, in the embarrassed and probably true belief that showing his face to any Amarrian in Kador space would complicate the mission. Jeanelle and Skids disembarked and headed for the bars.
It was a social hub of sorts for the nearby area, but heavily sectioned off. Colonists, these hermits of the world, knew how to respect privacy. The two women took a while to get familiar with the place, during which Jeanelle socialized heavily with every group they met while Skids grew increasingly morose. On one occasion they nearly wound up in a fight with the locals, when someone offered Skids a drink and she batted it out of the man's hands. Jeanelle made good but quickly retreated to another locale, taking a mumblingly apologetic Skids with her.
Eventually they managed to confirm the lieutenant's presence and approximate whereabouts on the colony. Unsurprisingly, he was being guarded by devout servants of Kador, who was used to taking good care of his people. Jeanelle knew many of these people from her last extended visit with the Kadorians, and it wasn't long before she was let into the circle. Skids, who could no longer disguise her discomfort with the colonists and the mission, hung back and did reconnaissance.
Day Seven
Jeanelle eventually returned, victorious and shining. She located Skids in an alleyway nearby, where the Caldarian was pacing about and kicking at rocks. Together they set off to find a secure communications terminal.
"How'd it go?" Skids asked on the way.
"Better than I dared hope," Jeanelle said. "You leave anyone in the dust?"
"Not so much, really. Anyway, did you have to do anything to get the info?"
Jeanelle gave her a bemused look. Skids blushed. "You know. I hate talking about that stuff outright."
Jeanelle laughed and put an arm around Skids' shoulder. "It's alright. I love what I do. But no, we really just talked. It's a shame. He's a good-looking man and I was hoping he had some interest in more, but really, he's under so much pressure that it took fairly nothing to open him up."
Skids raised an eyebrow. "So he gave Eturrer away."
"Not at all. But he talked about military installations and resource flow, in the delightful belief that a woman couldn't possibly understand it all anyway. Really, he thought he was using me as a sounding board and little more."
"And from that you can..."
"Deduce more or less where Eturrer is, yes," Jeanelle said. "Which may or may not be worth spit, if the guy moves or if anyone finds out there was a leak, or even if I was being told the truth. But we'll get paid either way."
"So where is he? Is he even here, in this part of space?"
Jeanelle put a finger up to her lips. "That would be telling."
Skids said nothing. Jeanelle asked, "How did your shift go?"
"Nothing much happened. Some people made a little trouble, but I sorted it."
Jeanelle, who knew Skids, understood this. "They still alive?"
"They weren't happy with your meeting. Thought you were a security risk. They were going to investigate us."
"And that would have been bad trouble," Jeanelle said.
"They're still alive, no worries. Are you sure you know where Eturrer is?" Skids said.
"Yes. Are you happy with the way the mission turned out?"
Skids briefly looked at her and said, "Absolutely," with not much conviction. They kept walking.
Eventually they made it to a narrow metal corridor in a reinforced part of the colony. A lone terminal was located there.
"Now we'll just have to send off the data and we'll be home free," Jeanelle said.
Skids had been walking in front of her for a while, and now turned to confront her. "I'm afraid not," she said to the merc.
Jeanelle sighed. "Skids ..."
"I can't let you do this. I can't."
"Yes, you can."
"You need to tell me where Eturrer is," Skids said.
"So you can contact the people who hate you and try one more bribe to change their view. It's not going to work, Skids. It never does."
Skids blinked, and said, "I don't recall having been the team traitor, but yeah, that's how it goes. I'm so sorry. I hate to do this, but I can't just help the enemy this way."
"You mean our employer."
"I mean the Gallente Federation. I don't expect you to understand, Jeanelle. Please give me the code."
"Why didn't you just tell on me? Sounds like you've joined the other side already."
Skids looked shocked. "I would never put you through that. Do you have any idea what they would do to you here if they knew what a traitor you are?"
"About the same as what the Caldari have wanted to do to you for years, Skids. Don't be stupid."
Skids didn't move. "You don't understand. Give me the info now."
"Let me put this in language that you'll understand, Skids. If you don't step away from that control, I'm going to blow you away."
Skids tensed, then relaxed and slowly grinned. "Go on, Jeanelle. Draw."
Jeanelle slowly reached into a pocket and pushed a button on something. Then she withdrew her hands and placed them near the guns on her belt.
Skids, in her element at last, stretched languidly to the ceiling.
***
Jeanelle sighed, walked over the body of her merc companion and keyed in a code on the control board Skids had been protecting. On the other side of the thick metal walls, wires crackled into action, switches passed on live currents, and a brief message was shunted out into the ether. Its contents spoke of the greatest traitor in the current history of the Gallente Federation and where he might be found, and they eventually weaved their way onto large monitors that cast reflections on the darkly grinning faces of his betrayed people.
Jeanelle picked up Skids' body and headed back to the ship. On the way there she contacted Asadir, confirming successful completion of the mission, and its collateral cost.
"Bring her back to the bay and I'll reset the Switch," Asadir said through the comlink. He added, "She'll be fine," though Jeanelle didn't know whose conscience he was assuaging.
She breathed deep and looked at the Caldarian's inert body. Unbeknownst to Skids, her quickdraw implant had an extra function. When set off with a specially prepared, deliberately focused EMP bomb, the implant would knock her out and erase all her recent memories. It wasn't healthy and it didn't work as well as it should - her past selves leaked into the present like trickles of water through the dam of quiddity - but it was necessary for someone like Skids, whose identity issues reached far beyond her conscious mind. She'd work things out some day. Until then, she needed support, and enough jobs to keep her abilities fresh.
The team did everything they could to keep her from harm. It was a unique and bothersome requirement of the Dead Man's Switch that its victim had to be made to feel as if she were dying. If they merely turned on the switch without faking Skids' death, the risk of irreversible psychosis rose by several orders of magnitude. So they loaded guns with blanks, and they faked hull breaches, and all the while they pressed little buttons and made their friend go through yet another death, to awake an earlier, cleaner self.
"You're sure she's not going to remember this one?" Jeanelle said.
"No more than the others, "Asadir said. "Way we've tuned it, she'll go back to herself before this mission even started. We just need to remember to keep our mouths shut."
"That's alright. We forgive her. Just like last time, and the one before that."
"She's a good one," Asadir said.
Jeanelle nodded in the gloom. "Yeah, she is. A little lost and out of control sometimes, but she's a sweetheart."
In the distance she could see the docking bays, steel and iron, waiting.
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My name is Janus Bravour. I am thirty-two years old. I am going to die.
The room in front of me is vast. It belonged to a high-powered Caldari executive who, like most of his ilk, was on the wrong side of the revolution. I would have preferred a smaller room. A room this size means you can't see everything around you, can't contain all the events occurring within its space. This is important. When you're a member of the Caldari State leadership, you need to contain all events within its space, lest they spiral out of control.
This room has spiraled out of control.
We gutted some of the more indulgent architecture - my leader and State ruler Tibus Heth took entirely too much delight in tearing out the cages that had held the strippers and soldering them into a box that now serves as the executive's new office - but the basics, the less-noticed ephemera that were truly Caldari, we kept. There is a sand waterfall, and laser birds that light through the air, and quiet sigils, cast on the floor, that morph from one meaning to another.
My name is Janus Bravour. I sit in a room with a waterfall running down one of its walls, the sand hissing as it trickles through the invisible gutters below.
I approved of the reconstruction. I take life seriously, as I've had to in these serious times. There are indeed those among us who feel that life is but a joke. They disdain the work we've put into rebuilding this empire, gutting it and retaining only the purity of our State, and they would like to see life return to the ways of old. These are our enemies, and I take them very seriously.
The birds flit through the air, oblivious. Their movements give me a little hope, deluded though it may be. I notice they always fly in pairs or groups. I had never seen this before.
My name is Janus Bravour, and I am the Chief Operating Officer of an entire empire. I am second-in-command to the most famous person in the world, a citizen revolutionary named Tibus Heth. Under Heth's guidance we toppled the ruling body of our empire, we reclaimed the planet that was our birthright, and we went to war.
Tibus Heth has many enemies. So, by extension, do I.
Heth is an impulsive man in person, governed by a roaring undercurrent of emotions. He is a brilliant military strategist, but his expertise is on the field, in the smoke and the carnage. The silent fighting that goes on in the everyday business of running an empire he leaves, truth be told, to me.
I support Heth and what he has accomplished, and have laid down my life as a wager. But I am not an impulsive man, which is why I complement his ruling, and thus he and I will never see eye to eye. I serve the interests of the State, as does Heth, but I do not feel that I serve it alongside him. We are each pulling it in a particular direction, and it is by this pull, this constant motion that is nonetheless fixed in place, that the State is given the power to continue existing.
If we were lovers, which we are not, we would be running our shared home right now, wondering whether a friendship and a shared set of ideals will carry us through the arguments in times ahead.
I envy the birds their synchronized flight. If I were to try the same I would die in an instant. And yet I must remain in some kind of motion, no matter how still it might seem. Stagnation is death. The moment we stop moving, we stop being viable human beings and become mere animated husks, solemnly waiting to die.
I see everything so clearly now. I expect it results from this personal revelation I've had of my mortality. I am going to die, and thus my mind is taking in every last detail it can before the final call.
I am being entirely too clinical about this. Given the circumstances, mind, I think it's excusable.
Aside from the birds, the sigil and the waterfall - all of which are intangibles of one sort or another, and don't really count towards the furniture in this room - there is nothing here but the closed door at the far end and the desk at which I sit. The window behind me casts a nice warm shadow on my workspace, and I know if I turned I would see the sun. I'm trying to resist the temptation.
On this desk are three things. The first is a glass cylinder set on a small, black base. The cylinder is about the length and width of my palm. Inside it are interconnected spiraling tubes, like strands of DNA woven into a tapestry, and inside those tubes are two globules of a silvery liquid reminiscent of mercury. The two blobs constantly pass through the tubes, pouring through them in defiance of gravity and inertia. In their paths they revolve around each other like electrons around a nucleus, inextricably entwined but always at a distance. They never touch, neither each other nor the invisible core they encircle, and they never stop moving.
It occurs to me that neither I nor Heth will ever truly be part of Caldari Prime. We encircle it, keeping its core contained. If we should fail, the core will not be compromised, but only so long as another one takes our place posthaste. I truly hope this will be the case.
The second item on my desk is a picture, taken from space. The background is a rich maroon, halfway between blood and rust. In the foreground, if such a term even applies to a thing as monumental as this, is a white globe inlaid with golden lights and frozen masses of clouds. This is Caldari Prime, the core of my existence.
The third item is a message, a greenish halo lit up in the air above my desk. I am sitting deathly still in my chair. Only my eyes have moved. Everything I've ever done has brought me to this point in time: Sitting here, in my office, unmoving, reading the news of my death.
This message is from an unknown sender, and I have no doubt that if anyone looks for it later, they will find it has disappeared. It doesn't recriminate, nor does it chastise. It is brisk, clear and honest. It says that this room has been filled with a poisoning agent that was activated at the reception of the message and will respond to human motion. I am breathing it in right now, into and out of my lungs, as I have been ever since I sat down in this room. If I move, wave my hand or even cast a last glance at the sun shining behind me, the agent will coagulate into a material that will stop my heart.
Somewhere in this building there will be a person - several persons, likely - who fell from their orbit of duty. I will move and I will die, and they will ensure the room is thoroughly ventilated before any investigation takes place. They will also guarantee the investigation finds I died of natural causes, and that I get a funeral befitting a Statesman. Honor will be upheld, I'm sure.
And while all of this was completely unnecessary - the poisoning agent and the traitors and the whole setup will have taken lot of time and effort - it was meant not merely as an assassination but as an insult, one to put me in my place. I have entered a trap where nothing I do will help. I am powerless to interfere. If I act, if I do anything other than sit perfectly still in this little kingdom of stagnation, I will die in an instant.
My name is Janus Bravour. All the roads are open to me, and all of them lead to my end.
And it is this that decides me, this realization that I am experiencing right now, in this moment that is both infinite and infinitesimal: That a man who is alive, who is truly alive, cannot but keep in motion lest he stagnate, and that this tiny glimmer at the back of my mind is not merely the resolution of my impending actions but the hope - an irrational hope, absolutely, which in truth makes it a faith, and I'm having to bite back a smile at the thought - that through the swiftest of motions I can cheat this final and absolute death, if I can but move, faster than light, faster than time itself, if I can exhale and inhale and ready my nerves and go-
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The landscape was beautiful and serene: The sun, recently set, cast the remnant of its reddish rays over clear blue skies; long fields of wheat billowed in gentle winds; farms with flowery gardens dotted the honey-golden vistas. It was nearly perfect, aside from the group of special ops quietly making their way through the land.
They moved in pairs, and the high stalks hid their passage. Arek and his partner Klar had the closest building and so moved slowest, insinuating themselves through the grass. Their clothing, light khakis and greens, was beset with ocular fibers that reflected their surroundings. It wouldn't fool heat scanners, but it didn't need to. Their intel, limited as it was, indicated that their prey had no high-tech apparatus in his home, not even proper weaponry. It was an idyllic existence insofar as such a thing existed for people like him.
He was a former army general for the Caldari. The first war was long since past, but war, like love, rests unquietly beneath its velvet facade. There had been a thousand skirmishes in a thousand places since, and in truth the hostilities had never properly ended, nor peace been fully agreed to; the fighting had merely petered out, like a sputtering flame. But some people had expended much of their breath keeping it alive.
In the Caldari State the general's war record was pristine, all the blood having been thoroughly washed off before it got a chance to dry. The Gallenteans knew better. He'd been responsible for countless silent atrocities against them, and in particular against the corporation whose agents now flowed over the landscape. After his retirement he had, at his express request, been rewarded with a quiet life living on a plot of land in the outback of space, a lowsec area where none of his enemies would ever think to look for him.
But wars find their soldiers, and the new war had found him.
Hostilities in this particular lowsec system had propelled Gallente agents to scout out its planets. Orbital photography, atmospheric probes and data mining had unearthed the general, hiding like a worm. Intel indicated his fixed location could be on any of several farms in the area, and while the first reaction of the Gallentean warring forces was to send a bomb or two down to the general area, it was quickly vetoed. The man was a minor war hero in his own empire and a war criminal in the Federation. It was determined that he was needed alive so he could stand trial for his crimes, and, of course, to pacify the increasingly revenge-hungry Federation masses. Besides, it was still early in the war, and inflicting unnecessary casualties could have carried grave implications, particularly in a Federation that had just suffered a terrible planetary invasion.
A group of black ops was assembled and brought up to speed. Retrieving the general alive was of primary importance, so much so that they were allowed only nonlethal weapons.
There was some dissent.
"Why's he coming in alive?" Arek said during the mission briefing.
"PR," the captain replied. "He comes in dead, he's useless to us."
"But we're going to kill him anyway."
"Not necessarily. He might be used as barter."
"I want an MTAC," Klar said.
"You're not getting one," the captain and Arek said in unison. The rest of the team looked on, not hiding their grins.
"Still want one."
The captain said, "This is a top-secret mission that has to be executed with stealth and precision, and you want to bring along a mechanized skeleton that'll thump the ground like god's own hammer."
There was silence in the room.
Klar said, "MTACs shoot rockets."
"Group dismissed. Get out."
So they'd kitted out in light, nonlethal gear. Tiny multiburst grenades locked to EM, instahardening foam bombs, and subvocal communicators, along with whatever personal gear they needed. Everything was passive except the communicators and their relays, and their power use was negligible. Anything else that might show up on scanner, including heat-vision gear, was left behind. In an isolated hostile location with no chance of backup or rescue, you relied on your own damn abilities.
They were dropped in so far away that it took them several days to make their way to the target point. They'd been lucky enough to escape injury, and nutrition tablets took care of malnutrition fears, but all the same the strain of the journey had rendered them a hair cranky by the time they reached the farms. They didn't know on which one the old general resided, but it was immaterial; they'd hit them all simultaneously.
Arek and Klar snuck up to the side of theirs, edging towards the windows. The general had not gotten to his old age through stupidity or lack of perception, and even with the agonizing care they'd taken not to be noticed on their way here, it paid to be careful, which meant not barging in through the front door.
Arek sent out a call to the other agents. Everyone in position?
Responses came in a minute later. Team Beta, position. Team Gamma, position. Team Delta, position. Team Epsilon, position. Team Zeta, position.
Arek nodded to Klar, who pulled out a multiburst grenade. The house was on two floors and Klar had hotly argued his ability to accurately toss in a grenade on the second story, but had been voted down by Arek, who claimed to be allergic to having grenades bounce off windowsills and fall on his head.
Arek pulled out his own grenade. He nodded to Klar, clicked it and tossed through the closed window. The sound of the breaking glass pierced the summer day and was echoed from the other farms, where the other agents were doing the same. The two operatives shut their eyes tight. There was a muffled noise and the air was filled with fractured light like a kaleidoscope come to life, so bright that it filtered even through their eyelids. Arek heard Klar mutter, "... nine, ten," and break the glass as he tossed in the other multiburst. It went off, and the second wave of fractured light made Arek nauseous. If the general hadn't been thoroughly disarmed by the first grenade, or had been elsewhere in the house, his roused curiosity or antediluvian tenacity would hopefully have been taken care of by the second.
Klar rose, shook his head a couple of times, moved to the front door and kicked it in. He had one hand raised, holding a foam bomb, though Arek noticed his other hand was lodged in a pocket.
They quickly scouted the area. As with most buildings on this continent of the planet, its outsides were concrete and the insides from wood, and the architecture favored large, open rooms favorable to inhabitants and kidnappers alike. Arek could never get used to the utter stillness after an EM-set multiburst had been thrown into a room. Quietness, yes; after you throw a proper live grenade into someone's living room there's not going to be much noise apart from a few dying gurgles. But the utter undisturbed serenity of a post-EM room, with everything in its place and all the pictures hanging undisturbed from the walls, set his teeth on edge. It was like firing a laser in the dead vacuum of space; you found yourself looking for the burn marks merely to prove the act of violence to your very own senses.
Not only was there no disturbance; there was no body. Arek caught Klar's gaze. Uh-oh.
He started to subvocalize a command but Klar caught his unspoken thoughts and quietly padded to the basement stairs. Arek pulled out a foam bomb and headed upstairs.
Calling it a second floor was laying it on a little thick. It was fairly large, but the slanted roof was low enough to call up a vague air of claustrophobia, and the only concessions to human inhabitation were a large bed, a dresser and various smaller clothing storages, and a large, intricately carved wooden desk. On the desk, surrounded by several framed pictures of people Arek assumed were his family, lay a single piece of paper.
Arek did a quick sweep, but the dressers were empty and the underside of the bed held not even a speck of dust. That left the desk, and the paper, and an unpleasant foreboding in Arek's mind. When he saw that the message was written in Gallentean - the Gallente tongue, one that no man on this planet was likely to know save the team and the general himself - he snapped it up immediately and began to read:
Welcome. I knew you'd come one day, whoever you are, so I made arrangements.
First off, this is my home and you're not welcome. I hope they're paying you enough to run fast and far away when my people go after you.
Arek rolled his eyes. He kept reading:
I have access to substantial funds, so it may surprise you to find the place so rustic. It's how I like it - I've always appreciated simplicity, and after a lifetime of serving the greatest army in the world, with all the myriad complexities inherent in such a career, I decided it was time I lived, at last, like a civilian. Also, this lifestyle helps me fit in with the people in this area. They're nice people. I like them.
But in the event that I ever got visitors, I made a few concessions to complexity and chaos.
Underneath this farm is a bunker.
Arek immediately subvocalized a warning to Klar, who gave an all-clear and said that if there was anything down there apart from firewood and mice, he'd be surprised.
It's hidden beneath the floorboards.
Arek subvocalized this. There was a splintering crash from downstairs, and Klar sent a subvocalized string of curse-filled surprise that served as confirmation.
There are similar bunkers underneath every farm in this area. Once I'd gotten to know the local citizenry I found them quite amenable to having their housing upgraded ever so slightly. I explained that I had a military background and that some people disagreed with my past work and protection of the State. I was surprised at how easily they agreed to have the bunkers installed, for I had feared they would simply run me off, or at the very least shut me out with that narrow-mindedness one expects of the rural stereotype, but I was proven quite pleasurably wrong. It turns out that here, on the edge of the world, people are used to protecting themselves against natural disasters, be they typhoons, floods, fires or anything else unwelcome that comes their way. The idea of a group of cowardly little men scurrying into their houses at night robs these people of no more sleep than the knowledge of rats scurrying in their walls, and they cheerfully accepted my proposition. A number of healthy subsidies for their work here didn't hurt, either. Their children will all go to State colleges.
Add to that a subtle early-warning system, and we all found ourselves ensconced in the safety of our respective steel boxes before you even got within sight of this place. I sent off an emergency call to my own forces, and even now they are on their way here to extract me. I would not want to be in your shoes if you are still here when they arrive.
Arek cursed. This deadline changed the mission parameters considerably.
Each bunker has all the supplies necessary for a long and healthy life, inasmuch as one
remains trapped underground. The atmospheric generators will work almost indefinitely and, dare I say it, will be ticking away long after you are all dead and gone. There is plenty of nourishment - most of it locally grown, actually - that I've had freeze-dried to last a long, long time, and the filtered liquid dispensers match those on any spaceship you care to name. To stave off boredom we have vidscreens, of an old and dependable brand that won't break for a while, and if they're not quite as exciting as the latest holoprojectors or Egones, I made up for it by including a substantial library of entertainment.
Lastly, each bunker is quadruple the size of the house below it, to detract from the risk of cabin fever. They lie far enough in the ground that they don't disturb the crops, but I'm sure you have people who can use sonar to verify my claims.
Klar subvocalized his impatience to Arek, who replied with a team-wide broadcast telling people to hang back. The others vocalized back, confirming that each team had found a similar note in their own entered houses.
There is another feature, mind, that I did not feel compelled to share with my neighbors. Every bunker except my own contains a canister of poisonous gas.
Arek sent a subvocalization to Klar telling him to back off now.
Not only will the gas kill whatever poor soul that enters the bunker without a mask, but everyone who inhabits it. It's a combination nerve gas and blistering agent that'll make each bunker's inhabitants keel over in pain, vomit blood, break out in horrific sores, lose their sense of reality and probably attack anyone who approaches them before their organs finally turn into a liquid mush and they go into massive cardiac arrest.
Every bunker is connected to the others with a transmission system. I daresay you could block it, but by the time you move in that kind of gear my supporting forces would long since have extracted me from this place. Perhaps if you ask them nicely, they'll let you keep some of your vital organs, though I imagine they'll likely leave some of you draped over the walls.
So if a single bunker is opened, they all start pumping the gas. That's not to mention thatthe bunkers cannot be safely opened from either side unless you know a specific code, and the only person who knows it is, I'm afraid, myself. If I die, my lovely neighbors will die, too - the men, women and children who even now are living their lives underground, waiting for the moment when my smiling countenance meets them at the entryway - and you will have all their fates on your conscience.
So you go ahead and break me out of the bunker to drag me off somewhere unheard of, and eventually I'll be returned to my State in exchange for political gain. All it will cost you is the cold-blooded murder of several innocent families. Look at my desk. Their pictures are there.
Arek looked at the desk. The pictures were there.
Good luck, whoever you are. I wouldn't want to be in your shoes.
Arek dropped the letter back to the desk and sighed deeply.
It was typical Caldari. Never do anything the easy way.
He communicated this to Klar and the rest of the team.
Klar sent back a question. So unless we get this guy out real soon, we're up in our asses in State soldiers.
Yep, Arek replied.
And the only way to get him out is to breach the bunker, which'll gas everyone else who lives here.
Yep.
Damn.
It fits his profile, I suppose, Arek said. He's a rotten one, from skin to center.
What do we do?
We have to abort.
The hell we are.
Look, Arek said, we don't have a lot of time. We get out, make our way to the pickup point and hope that our people can get there without being shot out of the sky. What do you want to do, just tear in there and kill him on the spot?
If we lose him now, he's gone for good.
Arek sighed. That's how it has to be.
The man is a monster, Arek.
I know. What else is there to do?
You said it yourself, Klar says. He's built a career on a lifetime of evil that's now hidden in this cover of old age. I'm sure he was real charming to the people here. Remember how charming he was to the Gallenteans he caught, back in the day?
Klar-
There was a sound downstairs.
Klar, what was that noise?
You know, these people you want to protect, they didn't ask any questions. He just gave them a lot of money and they took it. Nevermind he installed a bunch of hi-tech stuff in their homes, and they took it all, without even once thinking what this guy did to warrant that sort of protection. He said there were pictures up there, of those people. You saw the pictures we have? Of what he did to the Gallenteans he caught?
Arek rubbed his eyes. Klar, tell me that sounds wasn't a gun being cocked.
You know what they found in one of his old cells? Remember that pic, Arek? It was a small one, because there wasn't a lot left.
You brought a gun with you, didn't you, Klar?
Everyone in this place is complicit, and don't think for a second that anyone in Caldari is ever going to know, because then they'd have to admit that their old star general built a deathtrap for all the people who sold their souls to him.
Arek was going to argue with him, but something caught his attention. It wasn't a sound in the distance, but the absence of sound at the very edge of hearing: a stillness that comes when something very large is being very quiet, very far away. It was a sound that he'd last heard emanating through the walls of his own dropship. The enemy was coming. Time had run out.
And in that moment came the absolute clarity of two immutable, undeniable facts of life: The first, that he didn't want to do this, for it was absolutely wrong, it would make him a murderer and a marked man not only among the Caldari but in the eyes of the powers on the other side of life itself, and even though he was in this line of work he still had a shred left of resistance to the idea of murdering an entire community; and second, that in this place, doing the wrong thing for the right reason was the only option reasonably available to him as a human being.
Hell, he said. Go.
Be happy I didn't bring an MTAC, Klar said with undisguised glee. There were several sharp retorts and the sounds of crunching metal as he shot his way through the door and made his way into the bunker below. At some point Arek thought he heard a scream.
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Keeler was running through the ruins of his city. Its adults might be worried, but it was a darkened, broken paradise for its children.
The planet of Caldari Prime had recently been re-taken by Caldari forces after more than a hundred years of Gallentean occupation. Keeler was Gallentean and so were his parents.
Thanks to rising tension the city had been segregated even before the invasion, which kept the occupying forces from having to indiscriminately slaughter Gallenteans when they came in. Keeler remembered the day when the rains came; thunder and whine, red clouds at night, and black shapes in the distant skies. After the local military had been levelled the skies had darkened again and mountainous shapes had descended from the skies. Smoke and fire gusted from their blackened hulls as they settled on whatever was beneath, reducing it to rubble. The hulls had opened and armies of Caldari soldiers poured out, and whatever forces the Gallente could muster didn't stand a chance. Keeler had run out of sight before seeing what happened, but he'd heard the sounds. For weeks after his parents had been too shocked even to talk about it.
But the children saw it differently, for it was frightening and exciting like a child's life always is, and the ones who saw things they shouldn't have - blood on the sidewalks, shots fired into flesh - merely incorporated it into their imaginary worlds, needed now more than ever, burying it so deeply that it surfaced only through fantasy. Keeler envisioned it as two animals, one large and bulky like a toothless old dog whose flesh hangs slackly from his bones, the other a sleek, sharp cat with tensed muscles writhing beneath its skin, ready to attack and tear its prey apart.
As Keeler approached his hidehole in the silence of the late evening, he heard a noise.
All the children in this city, Gallente and Caldari both, had hideholes unknown to others, little cities of refuge, and if you found out someone else's you kept it to yourself. The hideholes were holy, as were all the secret paths through the cordoned-off parts of the city.
If the invading soldiers had realized this they probably could have dominated whatever remained of the city's initial resistance, but the children saw no pressing reason to help them, and they apparently so no pressing reason to talk to children.
Keeler stopped, having all the time in the world, and listened for the sound. There was a breeze and at first he thought the noise might merely be a piece of something flapping in the wind. As he listened on, he discerned a raspy tone to it, and a stifled irregularity punctuated by longer, harsher gusts. Someone was in there, coughing.
For an adult this might have been an agonizing dilemma: run away and hope not to get a bullet in your back; find a guard and risk betraying one of your own; or go in and investigate. For a child, no dilemma.
Keeler went in.
The man had crawled deep into Keeler's hiding place, stopping only when the wall barred his passage. He lay there in a fetal position, apparently asleep. There was precious little light in here, but enough that Keeler recognized his clothes as the old Gallente army type. They were torn and dirty, and soaked, which was bad news in the cold climate on Caldari Prime. There was still a little snow on him, which meant he hadn't been here long. Whatever remained of the previous occupying army - which the media called guerillas and the locals called freedom fighters and Keeler's dad called a goddamn pain in the ass - had retreated to the open country and the mountains, where they still held out and relied on outlying towns and villages for supplies. When Keeler had wondered how they could survive under those conditions, his dad had given him a look and said, well yes, for a city kid like you there's nothing in the frozen countryside except perhaps all the food a civilized society needs. But heaven help them if they need any lawyers.
In the gloom Keeler noticed what looked like small pieces of rectangular paper lying on the ground, some of them soaked from blood that had trickled from the man's legs. He leaned down and picked one up, and found that it was thick, lukewarm and much drier than it should be. It rustled in the silence.
The soldier cleared his throat and said, "Stimpacks. Bodywarmth."
Keeler froze. He thought the man had been asleep.
The soldier seemed to hear his thoughts. He slowly rolled onto his back, looking directly at Keeler, and said, "Didn't dare sleep. Been listening out for intruders." His face twitched into a smile that turned into a cough. The soldier clamped his hand over his mouth, trying to choke it down. When it had passed, he added, "Didn't hear you for a second."
Keeler said nothing. In this ruined city there was nothing to say.
"You going to tell on me?" the man asked. There was an evenness in his voice, a tone of equanimity. No hint of the condescension from adults who appended "kid" to everything they said, but no forced camaraderie, either. The soldier was speaking to him as an equal.
Keeler shook his head and saw the soldier exhale deeply.
"Why are you here?" Keeler asked.
The man took a while to answer, taking in slow, deep breaths. Keeler wondered whether he was badly hurt. His legs looked in really bad shape; the strips of cloth that had been tied around his thighs and ankles were dark with blood.
"I have a message," he said. "An important one."
"To who? Secret military message?" Keeler thought it over for a second, remembering some of the gooier plots he'd seen in books and vids. "Or to your loved ones?" he added.
The soldier grinned, or grimaced. "Why can't it be both?" he asked.
Keeler didn't have an answer. Instead he said, "I'll take it for you."
"I can't ask you to convey it," the man said. "Even if I could, I wouldn't. It's mine to bring. But I am going to ask you not to tell on me. I promise I'll try not to put you in danger."
"The troops would never catch me. I can stay safe," Keeler said.
The soldier barked a breathless laugh, leaned back and closed his eyes. Sweat glistened on his face in the fading gloom. "I'm sure you can," he said in a tired voice. "Probably better than me at this point. But I got this far. It's all on me. I'll see it through."
He stared at Keeler for a while, but Keeler got the impression the soldier wasn't seeing him. Eventually his eyes rolled a little up in their sockets and he leaned his head back, exhaling. Keeler stood there for a while, waiting to see if he'd say anything else. Eventually it got too dark to see, and when he heard faint snores from the man, he left and went back home.
***
They were having dinner, an eternal affair measured by the ticking of the clock on the wall. Keeler slowly mashed his food together with one hand, resting his head on the balled fist of the other. His dad was talking about a possible promotion.
"You say that like nothing has happened," his mom said.
"I'm still trying to rise in the ranks, hon," his dad replied. "We've got new leadership in some places, but it'll take them years to sort out the ownership issues with the Caldaris. Until then, whoever's proven useful might be kept on staff."
"There are other changes, too," she said. "Or haven't you looked outside recently?"
His father shrugged and kept eating.
"All those deaths-" His mom seemed to catch herself, casting a glance at Keeler, and continued, "All this tyranny, and it means nothing to you?"
"What means something to me is my family, and the food I put on your table," Keeler's dad said very quietly, staring directly into his mother's eyes. "Right now the millions dead out of billions still alive, the destroyed houses in cities that still stand, the loss of money in an economy that somehow still rolls on and puts food on this very table, everything is secondary. It has to be." Without even looking at the plate, he speared a piece of beef and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing in defiance with bulging cheeks.
There was a clatter as Keeler's mom put her fork down hard, then picked up her plate, stood up and said with a tremor in her voice, "I'm going to eat in the kitchen."
After she'd left, Keeler quietly laid down his own fork on the still half-full plate.
"You're not going to eat?" his dad asked, too loudly.
"I'm not that hungry," Keeler said. He added, "Dad, can I take some leftovers? I'll just eat them later."
His dad looked at him for a little while, then seemed to accept the peace offering, smiled and said, "Sure. No problem." Then, as he almost always did, he added, "Don't go too late to bed, now."
Keeler nodded. His parents were much too busy with their own worries to add him to the mix. As far as he knew, they never checked on him before bedtime, and so long as he washed off any visible grime they had no reason to think he'd been out late. He packed away the dinner, took it to his room, put on his sneaking clothes - greys and browns, a life in dust and dirt - and left through the window, the food warm in his hands.
***
For a city that had recently been invaded, it was in surprisingly good shape; tattered but working. Military and rescue workers had done an amazing job clearing out the fallout from the invasion. Keeler had spied on their progress and seen his first corpse, dragged out of the rubble of a barracks. There had been massive destruction, but the Caldari had been attacking a planet partly populated by their own people, and they had been as careful as they could. Some incidents during the invasion had forced them to go in with a heavier hand than planned, but most of the casualties had still been connected to the military. Everyone knew of someone who'd died, but not every family had lost a member. People still went to work. Order, such as it was, had been restored. Nobody knew what would happen tomorrow, and there were conflicting tales of all the past yesterdays, but for now they were alive and living. For some, including Keeler's dad, that was enough.
Keeler had to weave his way through areas cordoned off by Caldari troops. There were mobile soldiers stationed at checkpoints - they used the MTACs less in the cities after the invasion - and their sleek movements in their black body-warmth outfits and thin grey helmets made them look like hovering ghosts in the dark.
Getting past the main checkpoints was the hardest bit. Heat- and motion-seeking equipment was plentiful, but mostly focused on the paths that an adult would reasonably take. Even if the troops didn't go too hard on the kids they caught, you had to be careful, lest an annoyed guard lead you to explain a bloodied ear to your parents. In general the guards had been pretty good to people here, and mainly picked up the ones who caused major disturbances.
In one of the increasingly common arguments over the dinnertable, Keeler's mom had pointed out that the temporary peace was only that, while people got their bearings and took stock, and that a major civil rebellion was inevitable. Keeler's dad had replied that be this as it may, it wasn't as if they'd been left all huddled together in empty buildings, lighting fires with dead people's furniture, and that every man needed to have a good, long think about what exactly he was fighting for, and what would happen to those he loved if he lost. Aside from being unable to travel outside their sectioned area, he said, and having less money to spend than before, things hadn't changed all that much. Keeler's mom had said that this fragile semblance of daily life was the least those murderers could have done, for if it hadn't been established then the occupying forces would have had to pacify a lot of angry people with too much time and too little food on their hands. She had left the table early that time, too.
Sometimes it felt like they were living in two cities, each trying to become something different.
Keeler entered his hiding place, dinner in hand, and found nobody there.
***
The next night at dinner they had the vid on, common for post-argument evenings when they, in the words of Keeler's dad, just wanted to get through one damn dinner without one damn argument and pass the damn potatoes, will you please.
Keeler, still wondering what had become of the soldier, didn't pay much attention to the vid or anything else until the announcer's voice caught his ear. A Gallente militant had been caught in the city. Brown hair, medium build. Badly wounded legs.
According to the newscaster, the militant had been responsible for several deaths of both Caldari and Gallente, including civilians. He was likely here to seek shelter with conspirators or terrorist sympathizers.
"Good riddance," Keeler's dad said.
Keeler's mom said nothing. Keeler looked to her and said, "Is it really true? Was he a murderer?"
She looked sternly at his dad, then to him. "Maybe," she said. "It's hard to know, these days."
"Maybe they're lying," Keeler said with much more emphathy than he had expected to have. "Maybe he just wanted to bring an important military message to people here. Or a message to his loved ones."
His mom smiled at him. His father grunted and said, "Man was a killer. Not some heavenly messenger."
Keeler's mom snapped, "You don't know that."
Keeler looked at them for a while, then asked in honest wonder, "Why is always one or the other? Why can't it be both?"
While they were both taking deep breaths for angry answers, he got up and left the room.
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Even at this height, where Braea felt a twinge of sickening dizziness, the roars of the crowds below could be heard. They were muffled through the polycarb glass, and when one of many assistants urged Braea to step closer to the edge of her sealed balcony overhanging what seemed like the world below, she got the momentary impression that she could simply keep walking: Out through the glass, into the air and through the station ceiling, out into space and into the unknown and unending dark. She had to stop herself from taking another step lest she bump into the glass wall. The cameras would capture that, as they did everything else, and she couldn't imagine the hundreds of thousands down below all laughing at her.
The floor was carpet-clad but the walls all around them were transparent, and everywhere she looked down below she saw countless tiny heads, like little fallen stars, all of them looking either up at her or at the massive quartet of video screens that hung above her crystal enclosure and flashed her image to the four corners of this floating world. She ventured a quick look up, but the sight of herself cast on those screens gave her even more vertigo than the heights had done.
In that brief glimpse she saw the camera zoom out from her face and show her entire figure in that tight dress she hated. She'd put on weight, first from the stress of what happened to Gerets and then as comfort against the shock when he got back. It was nothing that an expensive designer couldn't fix, she'd been told, but she knew her own body and she knew what she was. Most of the time, at least.
She quickly looked back down and cast a glance at Gerets, who stood beside her and had not made a sound. In this place, with the crowd's overbearing adoration of them and what they stood for, it felt easier, more real, to look at his face, destroyed as it was. It was not their first public appearance after Gerets' checkout from the rehabilitation ward, but she was continually amazed to find herself here.
Gerets was her fiancé. He was a member of the Gallente armed forces. He had been stationed on Caldari Prime during the invasion. Orbital bombardments had hit his barracks, killing everyone else. He'd been so disfigured that they had to use RNA scans to confirm his identity. That's what had happened, and that was how it was. She had to accept that.
His face looked like a child's paper drawing of a man that had been smudged with water and grime before being crumpled into a ball and flattened out again.
She bit her lip, hard. This was how it was. No panic and no backing out.
His costume covered him from neck on down, but Braea knew what lay beneath.
He would be fixed, but not for quite a while, for it was on him to be the symbol of perseverance and strength in the face of stark, brutal reality. This was what they'd done to Our Boys, all the reason we needed to go out there with fire and thunder. After some time - maybe a year or two, or three or four, they'd been told - he would quietly be given the funds needed to fix himself, followed by a total news blackout on him.
She looked to her side and pretended to wave, sneaking a glance at the capsuleer who'd hid in their entourage. He stood off-camera, looking like one of many assistants. His cranial socket was covered with a skin patch which in turn was concealed under a tight hood. He'd showed them the setup when he first came into the deal, explaining that while some people would undoubtedly guess his identity, it shouldn't be publicly acknowledged by anyone on the team. The capsuleer had offered an unknown addition to the funds the Federation had earmarked for Gerets' operation, enough to secure him a watcher's position in the press circus that surrounded the couple. He wasn't shy about his support, though its scope was unrevealed, but this effort wasn't supposed to be about him.
They had agreed, as they had agreed to so much, initially for the hope of a new beginning and eventually for the raw need for an end.
***
The show ended and they all headed off for the VIP greeting session. The Federation had made substantial advances in the direction of total conquest, the news had said, and whatever else those advances were, they were undoubtedly absolute reason for rejoicing.
On their way into the main floor of the skyscraper, one of the tallest buildings on the station, some of the assistants quietly asked Gerets to follow them to the makeup section. There would be press.
Braea turned to follow them, but the capsuleer touched her elbow. "We're taking a little side route."
She furrowed her brows. The capsuleer said, "We'll get to makeup soon enough, and Gerets'll still be there." He looked towards Gerets and she followed his gaze. The skin on her fiancé's neck had gone reddish and some of the pustules residing on it had pushed their way out, dotting a flabby skin fold that dangled limply over his neckline.
Braea stared at his neck, then walked up to him, gingerly put a hand on his shoulder and said she'd be right along.
Gerets turned and looked impassively at her, then looked away and kept walking.
She told herself, for the thousandth time, that this sullenness was his nerves, nothing more than his nerves and the regimented behavior taught in the army, and not a lack of caring. Then she followed the capsuleer down another path.
They walked down a long corridor inset with soft light and entered a private elevator that took them down only a few floors. The elevator had one-way glass. Braea looked out, unseen at last.
"We can dim it both ways if it makes you feel queasy," the capsuleer said.
She blinked, looked at him, then said, "No, no. It's not that."
He leaned his head to one side, but said nothing more.
They left the elevator and walked out onto a floor that was one huge space, stretching throughout at least a third the length of the building. It was beautifully laid out, with touch-sensitive pads that left heat-signature tracks of her steps; furniture of leather and wood; and hologram paintings on the walls. Braea looked hard at each painting she passed, more than anything to take her mind off the world, and something began to catch her eye. It took her a moment, but eventually she spotted it in every one. That one rogue element: Herself. Hidden somewhere in the room would be cameras that took her image, processed it for presentation, and strategically projected it in the landscape of the paintings. She was an underwater diver, a resident in a dirtworld farmhouse, a captain of a spaceship. All the unwitting roles for her to play, a star even less real than the scenery.
She nearly bumped into the capsuleer. He'd stopped and was gesturing for her to take a seat in one of the leather couches. Leather, like wood, was a commodity on the stations and one she felt decidedly uncomfortable with, but the seat he was directing her to had a worn appearance and its leather surface had hairline cracks. "My favorite reading spot," he said.
She realized he was trying to help her feel relaxed and the small gesture set her at ease. She sat. "Is this someone's apartment?" she asked him. "Is it yours?"
He sat beside her, at a respectable distance. "Yes, it is. This is the entryway."
"How much of this floor is yours?"
"All of it," he said. "But I didn't bring you here to impress you."
She doubted it, but said nothing.
"How did all that fanfare make you feel?" he asked.
She narrowed her eyes and remained silent. Although he'd been in the project almost from the start and had remained affable throughout, he was a capsuleer. She and everyone she knew had an ingrained awe of his kind that was equal parts fear, admiration, distrust and wonder. The gulf that existed between him and everyone else was not easily bridged.
Also, she didn't yet know what he wanted out of all this. His monetary gift to the program had been quite substantial.
Also, she was very tired, not least of being stared at by people with ideas in their head about who she was.
"It's uncomfortable," he says. "Doesn't really feel like it's really you they're seeing or want to see. I know how that is."
She debated how forthright she could be with him and decided to try the waters. "Not to be ungrateful, but how I feel is a little complicated and I'm not at all sure I understand it myself yet. Is there a reason we're here? I should be with my husband."
"He's only your husband to be," the capsuleer said. His tone would have felt insultingly dismissive to Braea, but it struck something that she was too bright to write off as mere pride. "That's the big part of the news, isn't it?" he continued. "You two, despite everything, still aiming to get married sometime in the near future. I don't even think you've picked a day, have you?"
"We did," she said. "But after ... after what happened, it's all up in the air."
"Yes. I'm told you were convinced to put it off. Some war message agents came over. Guys who thought our supportive masses would like the idea of the girls supporting our troops but wouldn't quite want to confront the idea of what would happen on the wedding night. And you know what? That delay is actually a good thing."
She firmly ignored thoughts of the wedding night and focused on the capsuleer. Whatever he was leading up to it felt like he was on her side, though whatever side that was she didn't know yet. "Is it?" she said, then bit her tongue.
He smiled again. "It is, actually. The fanfare is necessary for the people, but you'll find they really don't care about the aftermath. Aside from a few newsmen scrounging for follow-up human-interest stories, you'll soon be pushed out of the limelight, never to return."
She looked down. "Maybe that's for the best," she said quietly. She felt so tired.
"Maybe for some," he said. "But I've got my own ideas, and the ability to follow through on them. Half the money is yours, by the way."
"Thanks," she said. She'd heard this said before. Unity and strength; we all stood by each other's side.
"I'm not speaking figuratively. Today's reception is the last in this grueling press run you've been on for the last few weeks. Once you finish it, half the funds allocated to you and Gerets will be put into savings that he can rely on, released in substantial installments over several years, and will cover not only his rebuilding procedures but practically anything else he might desire. He'll get a new body and a better life to live it with.
"The other half of the money is yours and will become immediately available. It's registered to you and is yours to handle as you see fit. You have no more duties. Not to me, not to the government or the press, not to the people, not anyone," he said. "Not even your fiancé."
She stared at him, not knowing what to say.
The capsuleer said, "People can be regrown. I've been destroyed enough times to know that, and I understand the process better than most. One day, a while from now, Gerets will be rebuilt. It'll take a long while and will be agonizing even for a man who's experienced plenty of pain already, but it'll happen, at least on a physical level. There'll be physiotherapy and there'll be bad days that slowly get better.
"But there's nothing that can be done for the spirit. That'll have to take care of itself for now. Therapy will help, but after you've been broken and rebuilt, well..." He raised his hands, palms upwards. "You're never the same."
"Why are you doing this?" she said in a whisper. On the wall, her painted simulacrums leaned down with her, nearly invisible in the colorful backdrops.
The capsuleer leaned forward too, resting his face on his hands. "You're a very pretty young woman, and I say that as someone who has absolutely zero interest in you in that way. You could have your choice of men, but you chose this one and you stuck with him. Until now it's been out of love and duty. After this point, it could've been out of duty still, or possibly out of darker motivations."
"If you're implying it was all for the money-" she said, but he interrupted. "No, I'm not. It's for the duty, and for what you once had, and for what you might have in some imagined fantasyland. But you've got smarts behind that pretty face and you know as well as I do that with this kind of commitment there comes self-doubt, even self-hatred, and a twisted kind of loyalty that you can never quite gel to. If you stay with Gerets while he's like this, not just physically deformed but mentally scarred over it, you risk turning yourself into a martyr and poisoning everything you might have had with him."
"Do you want me to leave him?" she said, a small tremor in her voice. "I can't. I can't do that."
"Let me tell you something," he said. "The people who organized this, as far as they're concerned, Gerets is no hero. He's a terribly unlucky everyman, chosen to be a poster boy of what the enemy did to our people and handed a little bone to chew on as a thanks. Before I came into this deal, the plan was to stagger the release of regrowth money so much and thrust it behind such masses of red tape that you'd effectively have been serfs of the government in perpetuity. I brought in ten times what they'd set aside for you, and even that amount is less than I can make in a day. You owe them nothing, nor me, nor anyone else.
"You're not doing this out of sympathy alone," she said in a cold tone.
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm not?"
"I noticed the hints you dropped during the procession. Even if you know what it's like for people to think of you as something you're not, it wouldn't have made you do all this."
He regarded her for a while. His expression quivered slightly, and Braea realized he was trying not to smile. Eventually he said, "Well, you're right. In my defense,altruism was a real factor in my offer. But there's more to it; of course there is.
"I've been hurt, and deformed, and even killed. I've woken up in a clone vat more often than I can recall. I've never gone through what Gerets will, but I've been burned nonetheless." He leaned forward again. "There comes a point, Braea, where you're so far gone that you lose the ability to reach out to the people who matter. When you reach that point, having someone who's there only out of the duty and the darkness, and not out of pure and unfiltered love ... well, that someone will make you want to stay inside and wait for them to go away."
He took her hand. "How long's it been since Gerets touched you?"
She pulled her hand away, and looked at the walls. All her colored selves looked over their shoulders, too.
The capsuleer said, "If you think he doesn't know what's going on-... no, if you think he can't see how you feel, that he doesn't know every thought in your head, you're dead wrong. I spoke to that young man. He's bright. Morose, naturally, but still very bright, and he pays attention. And he's in terrible, terrible pain that you're only going to make worse if you stick around and force yourself to pretend that everything's the same."
"Then what do I do?" Braea said, still not looking at him.
"I had someone who clung to me. She did it for glory, me being a capsuleer, and even after I'd had my head scrambled by too many clonings in too little time, even when I made her life this absolute passive-aggressive hell, she still hung on. And eventually what was left of the love evaporated, because even as I wasn't the same person anymore, neither was she. The balance changed and she changed with it."
He stood up. "I want you to do what's right. This does include being to Gerets what he needs you to be, but to be honest, that's a secondary concern. You shouldn't carry him any more than you should carry a banner for the government's propaganda. Your duty is to yourself, always, and only to others through that. If you can be to Gerets what you want to be, then do it. If not, well, now you have a choice, and an obligation to realize that choice."
She stood up. Her painted selves rose with her.
He grinned slyly. "And heavens, you need makeup. Your cheeks are streaked with tears. You can't be seen like this; think what your husband would say!"
She let out a choking laugh. They walked back to the elevators. The tiles left tracks that gently faded in the wake of their passing.
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Since the early days of the Caldari State, the eight corporate police forces of the Chief Executive Panel have played an important role in Caldari society. Figures of great public attention, reviled and worshiped in equal measure (often by the same person), these eight private militaries collectively match the official Caldari Army in numbers and far exceed it in training.
What are these forces, how do they operate, and how did they come to be?
Necessity and Invention
Some years after the dust of the Caldari-Gallente War had settled and the eight corporations of the Chief Executive Panel were getting acclimated to running an independent Caldari State, the issue of defense spending was raised at a national budget meeting. The Kaalakiota Corporation and the Sukuuvestaa Corporation were by this point well established as bitter competitors for the top of the revenue pile, and the subject spawned a heated debate between the two corporations’ CEOs.
The passage of time had done little to diminish the Kaalakiota leadership’s wartime alertness; they had long been advocates of increased military spending, particularly towards protection of assets in the homeland. The Sukuuvestaa, meanwhile, wanted the available funds diverted towards land partitioning on newly settled planets, reasoning that the creation of new assets was every bit as important as the protection of existing ones. That Kaalakiota dealt primarily in arms at the time, and Sukuuvestaa primarily in real estate, were topics not raised at the meeting.
Due to the rivalry between the two the discussion soon escalated far beyond its purview, and what began as a simple debate swiftly turned into a heated argument rife with overtones of power struggle. The remaining executives of the CEP, uncomfortable with this potential disruption in the works, voted to momentarily shelve the topic.
Kaalakiota was not happy. Shortly after the meeting, they announced that the corporation would be bringing its own financial resources to bear in forming an independent internal security force, "tasked with maintaining peace and order on all Kaalakiota holdings." This organization they called Home Guard, a name taken by the corporate-political community as a pointed reference to the dispute between the two leaders. Sukuuvestaa responded in kind by releasing a statement curtly announcing their intention to create their own military arm. In a direct jab at Kaalakiota, they named their force the "Peace and Order Unit." The other mega-corporations, not to be outdone, soon followed suit. Within the year, all eight members of the Chief Executive Panel had either announced or begun formation of their own internal security forces.
Smoke and Mirrors
From this bed of bluster sprouted the eight organizations known today as the Chief Executive Panel’s faces of power. Equal parts propaganda tool and police force, the corporate forces are in many ways the most direct outward representation of their parent corporations’ power, affluence, style and cultural significance. Seeking to capitalize on the relentless propaganda battle between the powers that be, Caldari entertainment interests have in recent years made very lucrative deals with these forces, hurling their desired images into the cultural zeitgeist in return for a slice of the profit pie.
Avoiding direct competition in favor of finding their own niche, each of the eight has diversified into their own particular area. Spacelane Patrol, CBD’s corporate force, is continually portrayed as a cadre of brash hotshots who travel from one corner of the universe to another on missions that usually involve much purposeful strutting around exotic locales. The Lai Dai Protection Service, meanwhile, are regularly shown to be a group of dashingly handsome tactical geniuses who devise complex original stratagems at the drop of a hat, usually under circumstances of extreme duress. Kaalakiota were the first to make this type of entertainment deal and have arguably been the most successful: Home Guard’s image is second to none, not just among the corporate corps establishment but also in the popular cultures of all four empires.
The glossy tropes of the public relations holoreels and the beige glamour of stylized war worship stand in stark contrast to the reality of these agencies, but most people have only a muddy awareness of the dichotomy. A man can be rudely treated by a brusque and superior Ishukone Watch officer and silently curse him for hours, but as soon as he gets home that evening he is just as likely to prop his feet up and enjoy a rousing serial where the Ishukone Watch’s superior technology and cunning allows it to root out Gurista spies and double-cross them into revealing their hideout. So pervasive is the propaganda that it is highly doubtful this man ever draws a parallel between the real thing and the image; the connection he draws, instead, is between the image and the mother corporation it represents.
Internal Security, the Nugoeihuvi Corporation’s force, poses a curious irony in this regard. Though the Nugoeihuvi conglomerate’s main preoccupation is the entertainment industry, they have consistently failed to change the prevalent cultural image of their troops as a pack of rough-and-tumble thugs culled from the Caldari underworld, given to the grossest abuses and atrocities. It’s very rare for elements of the Caldari State to find the rumor mill outgrinding them in their efforts at propaganda, but that’s what’s happening to Nugoeihuvi. (In reality, for the record, Nugoeihuvi’s soldiers are not any more or less savage than those of the other corporate forces, though broadly speaking they have been noted to harbor a slightly greater proclivity toward drink and drugs.)
Cloak and Dagger
Of course, the strong public relations utility of these forces does not mean that the good men and women that serve within them are mere puppets on a stage (though there exists, of course, a contingent of people willing to proclaim just that). It is an integral thing, for obvious practical reasons, that these militaries be proven without the shadow of a doubt to have aptitude in their profession. For this purpose a training summit is held each year at an undisclosed location, where the corporate forces lock horns in a series of combat- and survival-related challenges. This is the Haadoken Summit, and it is an event of great significance in Caldari culture.
Since nominally none of the corporations want the results to get out, the proceedings carry a veneer of secrecy. Betting on the event is strictly illegal, but it nonetheless creates underground gambling revenue far exceeding that of any official State sporting or entertainment event. Despite ledger upon ledger of regulations and reprimands, information about the results is invariably leaked by someone in the winner’s camp, and so it is in this crucible of competition that the holoreels, the slogans, the commercials and the claims are either gloriously validated or revealed as nothing but empty spectacle.
Though nobody is ever declared deceased during the proceedings, it is a matter of public record that at least a dozen die each year and many more are injured (the families of the fallen receive standardized letters of condolence claiming their loved one has died in a training accident). Being essentially a contest between corporate ideologies played out in a quasi-military arena, the event touches many nerves in the Caldari soul, and its various obstacles and scenarios have been immortalized in countless holoreels and serials. The winners of the last three Haadoken summits have been the Ishukone Watch, whose level of training and tactical skill appears to be currently unmatched within the corporate forces.
Bread and Butter
These agencies also perform the more mundane duties of a mega-corporation’s internal security force. They ceaselessly patrol the perimeters of their territories; they conduct counterstrikes against pirates and terrorists; and they are responsible for security on every ship, outpost, station, moon and planetside facility owned by their mother corporations. They are also granted legal authority to act as police proxies within corporate jurisdiction, though in all cases where regional police have a presence their authority supersedes that of the corporate police.
Corporate forces are often criticized for their policework. Some of the more common accusations are gruff and uncaring demeanor, propensity for unnecessary violence, and lack of response time (particularly to non-acute, non-violent crimes). There is a simple reason for this: among the corporate forces, policework – which invariably involves dealing with the great unwashed masses – is seen as a lower-rung duty, a job for those unfit to serve in more of a military capacity.
Worst of all is policework on space stations, which tend to be overcrowded with travellers from a staggering multitude of places, each possessing a different set of legal rights based on his nationality and organizational affiliation, and each of which is cranky and in a rush and probably sweating. Additionally, corporate interstellar law dictates that stations’ rental offices and other commercial zones be segmented into a patchwork of diplomatic units, each with its own rules and regulations. Policework on stations therefore tends to be an affair fraught with jurisdictional pratfalls and covered in a tangled underbrush of red tape.
To their credit, corporate forces do have a well-deserved reputation for responding swiftly and decisively when circumstances truly call for it. If things get very bad very fast – if there is a hostage situation, if there is a large brawl, if there is some sort of large-scale accident or disaster – the corps will be there, fast, and they’ll attack the problem with everything they’ve got. People may grumble about rudeness and laziness and bureaucracy, but regardless they rest content in the knowledge that if a true crisis presents itself, they’re in good hands.
Steel and Plasma
Altercations between the corporate forces exist on record, but in almost every case they have been small incidents based on misunderstanding, with warning shots the only ordnance released. A notable exception is an incident known as the Ingalles incident, where soldiers belonging to the Wiyrkomi Peace Corps opened fire on a Hyasyoda convoy being escorted by the Hyasyoda’s agency, the Corporate Police Force.
The Hyasyoda detail had received advance clearance for entry into the outpost, a high-tier classified Wiyrkomi research node buried in the shadow of a Citadel moon. They were to escort the CEO of a subsidiary of Hyasyoda’s, Santra Alloys, to a meeting with a high-ranking Wiyrkomi scientist. The arrangement was legitimate (if unusual), but the Wiyrkomi Peace Corps saw incongruity in the direct meeting of a CEO and a scientist.
They stopped the convoy and conducted a heavy-handed interrogation. Due to a fatal combination of bad intel and jittery nerves, they then ended up attacking it, killing four people and destroying the reputation of their police force for years to come. (To this day, the Wiyrkomi Peace Corps are something of a laughing stock among the corporate forces, and to compound things they consistently place near the bottom of the yearly summit’s scoreboards.)
Today and Tomorrow
It is unclear at this moment whether Tibus Heth, the Caldari State’s newly instated Executor, has any specific plans for the corporate forces. It is considered likely, however, that he will try to gain control of them and use them for his ends if hostilities with the Gallente Federation escalate any further. Doing so will be easier said than done, as these organizations retain a great deal of power in the name of their public appeal, to say nothing of their competent and well-equipped soldiery. The allegiances of the complex network of sponsors, affiliates and marketers they associate with, however, are wholly unknown.
During the invasion of Caldari Prime, all eight forces lent manpower to various aspects of the operation, from tactical strikes to civilian relocation, and the squadrons who participated have now mostly come back. Some scarred by atrocity, others whetted and ready for more, they are returning to their compatriots bearing tales of woe and grandeur on the blasted front. Where their loyalties will fall – and what sort of influence they’ll spread – is anybody’s guess.
If and when the time comes for Heth to begin making inroads, it remains to be seen what the CEOs of the Chief Executive Panel will do to hold on to these flagbearers of their outward image. One thing is certain, at any rate: whoever commands these forces controls a good deal more than just a group of men with guns.
Jetek, sleepless, walked down the empty corridor and headed for the stars on the ship.
Every space vessel had a viewing platform somewhere in its design, its purpose varying from celebration to contemplation. On some it might be a great hall, decorated and warm and beset with equipment to watch the stars. On other, smaller ships, it could be as little as a room with a window and an information vidscreen beside it, where you could call up all human knowledge on the planets in view.
This chamber was somewhere in between. It was round, had only one entrance, and its few metal chairs glinted a muted gold in the faint lights from the high ceiling. The walls held Amarrian religious icons, forms and images, but most of these were partly covered by the recently hung banners of House Sarum. Aside from the metal chairs the main type of furniture, spread mostly over the center and far end of the room, was small backless benches, soft and upholstered with a purple, suedelike material. The entire far end of the room was overtaken by a curved wall of transparent polycarb glass, and through its unbreakable wall lay open space, infinite and constant. Vast nebulas the sizes of small kingdoms dominated the view.
Sitting on those low benches in the middle of the room made you feel small, almost like a child again. Jetek longed for that feeling sometimes, in these complex times. He came here when the roars of the rivers in his head needed calming, and this little alcove of the moving world, this small forest of metal and stars, never failed to offer its lulling quiet.
Jetek had been hand-picked to this crew, as had everyone else. He'd been vetted by psych and doctor teams both, and while he'd never gone to great lengths to advertise his loyalties - he was a crewman, not a politician - they stood unquestioned.
Which was why he was onboard this ship, entrusted with bringing Empress Jamyl Sarum to her destination on this multi-day trip.
Her retinue kept to itself, maintaining court in their section of the ship's living quarters, and while the crew was permitted to enter at will, their intermingling with the royal entourage was subtly discouraged. One knew one's place on this ship.
So when Jetek entered the room and sat on one of the benches, with most of his own crew safely asleep and the Empress's own people presumably all secluded in their part of the vessel, he did so with the expectation that it would be as blessedly empty as it had been all the other times he had taken refuge there.
When someone cleared their throat, it raised the hairs on the back of his neck, and when he turned and saw who was standing in a darkened part of the room, he felt like his skin was going to tear itself off his body in fear.
Everyone had known who Jamyl Sarum was, long before she reappeared, and everyone knew exactly what she'd done in the recent Minmatar invasion, though no two stories of the event ever seemed to match. All agreed, though, that she'd stopped the Minmatar in their tracks. She carried with her a reputation so legendary that it was reaching mythological levels, and her images showed an extraordinary beauty that brought decidedly secular thoughts to the minds of young men. She was as godly as anyone in this world could be.
Before him, not ten steps away, stood Her Highness, the ruler of Amarr Empire, Empress Jamyl Sarum the First.
He made a noise somewhere between a mewl and a stuttered choke.
She stood there and regarded him, then took a few slow steps closer. His legs, now made of jelly, wanted to run away but didn't manage more than a twitch. In some panic-frozen part of his head he was thankful the fear had paralyzed him, for running away blindly from Her Highness would likely be one of the very few things even worse than walking in on her without leave or purpose.
"What is your name?" she said. He merely stared back, unable to speak.
She stepped closer. Her brown silk robe trailed behind her like a second shadow, and the gold decoration on its folds glinted in the faint light. Her long chestnut hair cascaded down her back, so dark that it was almost indistinguishable from the robe. She smiled at him, which made it only so much worse.
"I'm tired of speaking to no one but my retinue," she said, in a voice that felt like warm sunlight. "It is stifling. I want to reach out to others, particularly the isolated souls in the darker reaches. We mustn't ever fear the unknown." She leaned her head to one side. "Are you all right? You're gaping wider than a Slaver at feeding time."
His throat decided to let air through at last, and as he gasped he found his voice. "Empress, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to intrude, forgive me, I'll be off-"
"Stay, please," Sarum said. "I could do with the company. On this long journey there's been little else to do but think, or talk to oneself."
"I really didn't mean to sneak up on you, Empress, and I don't think I should be this close-"
"Oh, hush. I don't feel the slightest bit insecure. And I heard you coming," she said.
This surprised Jetek, who could have sworn he hadn't made a sound when he entered, but it put him at ease. He rose from his seat and kneeled in front of Sarum for a moment, then got up again and went to the window, standing there at a respectable distance. She walked up to him, making his skin crawl again in apprehension, and stared out at the same stars.
"What is your opinion of God's great work?" she said.
"I'm sorry, Highness?"
She gave him another wonderful smile. "The skies, Jetek. The seas you sail."
He thought about this, hoping to stop sounding like a moron. The best he could think of was to say, "I think they're wonderful, Empress. That's really the only word I can think of."
"It's a good word," Sarum said. "But what about the people who inhabit them?"
"Some of them are wonderful too," Jetek replied, biting his tongue lest it left his mouth. The Empress's alignments would be different than the Chamberlain's, and going against the supreme leader's worldview was a bad idea no matter how likeable they might seem.
She seemed to notice his hesitation, for she smiled and said, "Yes. Some of them are wonderful indeed. But what about the ones who are not? What should we do about them?"
"I'm sure Her Highness knows best," Jetek replied promptly.
She looked back to the stars, giving no hint whether she approved of his noncommittal answer. But her expression changed, growing steely and blank. It reminded Jetek of nothing so much as passing to the dark side of a planet. He hoped he would make it out of the room alive.
"There was someone, I forget his name. I did everything I could in difficult circumstances and it wasn't enough for him," she said. "He had to take a stand. For some, when they're desperate, it simply isn't possible to solve things reasonably. They must have noise and fire to match whatever's in their heads."
"So what do you do?" Jetek asked, despite himself.
She fixed him with a steely glance. "You react. Sometimes you have to hurt someone to make them understand how badly they're hurting themselves. You have to come to the rescue by being the villain, not just for them but for everyone they touch, lest they lose themselves in that same hellish fire." She turned away from the stars and took a seat, never letting her gaze waver from Jetek's presence. "So there is punishment, which is the wrong word for the right thing, something that marks them for life, brings them under control, makes them a productive part of society. What's the word I'm looking for, Jetek?"
"I wish I knew, Empress. I truly do." Jetek remembered this man. His name had been, and likely still was, Kerrigan Orsha. During a fiery speech he had shouted at and berated Jamyl Sarum in an open assembly, calling her names that really shouldn't be uttered at the impending supreme ruler of one's own empire. The assembly session had dissolved into chaos and Orsha's own family had renounced him in an attempt to save themselves. It had worked, after a fashion: Lord Orsha had been judged and found guilty of heresy, a charge that carried the death sentence, but the Empress had granted him clemency of a sort. Instead of death, she had decreed that he have the words of his outburst tattooed on every part of his skin. She had offered him the option of withdrawing to a convent to study the scriptures for the remainder of his life, which he had gratefully accepted, his old and public life effectively ended at this point.
The Empress had a faraway look. She said, "... Benediction."
Jetek shivered.
"I wanted to bring him into our fold, for if I hadn't, he would have railed and thrashed until he shook himself to pieces, and we'd have had no choice but to put him out of his misery," she said, looking to the stars again. Her expression softened, and it was like the sun rising again.
"Do you think I'm beautiful?" she asked in a much milder tone.
"Yes, Highness," he replied without a moment's thought.
"Do you think I'm awesome?" she asked, every syllable of the word clicking smoothly into place.
"Yes, Highness," he replied again.
"Do you think I'm terrifying?" she asked, as if they were all the same questions.
"Yes, Highness," he said, understanding that in fact they were.
Quiet fell on them. Nothing could be heard but the hum of the ship itself, the tiny little creaks and thrums that came from anything alive and moving. It consistently amazed Jetek how something so powerful could be so quiet.
She was still looking at him with that faraway gaze, though whether it was in expectation, or if she was merely lost in thought, he couldn't tell. He didn't dare disappoint her, so he said, "It's more mercy than he could have expected before your time, Empress. People ought to have respect."
She nodded and stood up, walking to the window. The silk of her robe hissed softly as it was drawn off the seat.
She said, as if to the stars, "The man had five children and twelve grandchildren. He had friends, even if he's lost them now. He was a known person. And respect, just as the lack of it, is like little fires that need to be kept lit and alive."
The ship turned slightly, creaking.
She looked back at him and her expression resembled the sun itself now, blinding and majestic, peaceful and soothing, focused and completely engulfing all at once. It was like being cradled in the arms of the end of the world.
"On his flesh, among the words of scripture, we tattooed the names of his children and his children's children," she said, and Jetek would swear to his final days that something flashed in her eyes, as if wanting to break free, "And he will never forget who he is, or who we are."
She fell silent again. He swallowed audibly, realized his mouth was hanging open, and snapped it shut.
"But you won't tell anyone about this meeting," she said. There was no menace in her tone, no threat nor promise of danger; merely a relaxed, even concerned, conscience.
"Of course not," he said.
"Of course not," she repeated. "I know you won't."
The stars seemed cold and uncaring to Jetek, and his fate like a stuttering flame, soon extinguished.
The Empress looked out at those same stars. "We need to save them, all of them, from themselves. We need to reclaim their fates and envelop them in ours. And we need to love them, no matter how much it hurts."
She touched the glass and added, "All these wayward children."
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"But no one’s gonna come down on me for this, right?"
"Don’t worry about a thing. The agency will cover your back legally, we’ll assign a pseudonym, you’ll be absolutely fine."
"Yeah. I just need to be sure there’s absolutely no…"
"Mr. Sitsui. Remember what we talked about."
"I know, I know." The young man tugged absently at the dark tin figure-eight woven through both nostrils. The sight of his skin stretching made her nauseous.
"Okay," she said, with more finality than she felt. She fixed her gaze on the table between them. "Whenever you’re ready, go ahead and start from the beginning. If you want to reword something, just stop and say ‘I’d like to reword, please.’ If you aren’t sure you’re remembering something correctly, it’s very important that you mention that, even though you’re going to give us the events as they transpired to the best of your recollection. All clear?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
She leaned back in her chair and briefly thought about lighting a cigarette, then decided against it. Better to let them ease into it on their own. Wait until they find their feet in the story, then light the torch as a sign that everyone’s at ease.
"Okay. So we’re sitting there, there’s about four of us..."
"Wait. Start by telling me a bit about who you are. Sorry."
"Oh. Okay. I’m Orin Sitsui. I’m, uh, I’m a materials tech for Caldari Constructions, here under service contract with Kaalakiota Second Command, currently on eighth year of service."
"All right, that’s good. Thanks."
"Sure. So, yeah. Four of us, I think maybe five, but I’m pretty sure four."
"This was where?"
"In my section. The east ridge, level 55. My hab was in a real sweet spot, right next to the Syntact galleries and a row of restaurants. A small group of us who’d been in training together, we used to always hang out there. And this time that I’m talking about – we’re all pretty new, you know, and most of us have never been exposed to how strict the regulations really are up here. I mean, we were told in training but I guess they didn’t do a good enough job of hammering it in or something, because almost everyone I knew would have a story within like a week. One guy got trapped in the laundry room after hours and had to be rescued by maintenance drones. One guy wore a wristpiece that covered up a part of his ID derm and got zapped by his own doorway. Everybody was adjusting, you know?"
She nodded, bunching up her toes inside her shoes. That cigarette was calling her.
"So, right. We’re sitting in one of the places near my hab on a Wednesday afternoon, and we’ve just finished a long bout of shifts so we’re looking at four days off. We’re drinking, you know, getting fast on cheap stimstickers – yeah, legal ones, of course – and just having a good time, and then there’s a commotion. Turns out there’s a capsuleer coming through. Now, this was before the big boom, so eggers were ultra-rare. None of us had ever laid eyes on one.
"Turned out there wasn’t much to see. He was really short. Dark hair, nondescript face. Civire, I’m pretty sure. He had a contingent of Home Guard guys with him, real nasty pieces of work. You constantly heard about the Home Guard guys on the station. Infantry grunts, right? Signed up for war. Getting put on space station guard duty, for these guys, was like being told to cook and eat your own face. One of the guys in our section had a brother who was a Home Guard recruiter, and he said the guys who got assigned to the space stations were all being punished for insubordination, even if they did end up leading squadrons of the contract grunts. He said they joked that being a Station Sergeant was a demotion from Private.
"I really should have known better, I guess. Should have, I don’t know, I should have put two and two together. But whatever."
She took the cigarette case from her pocket and nimbly fished one out, then placed it between her lips and lit it. Distantly he stared at the cherry of her flame for a few seconds.
"Would you like to take a break?" she said. "There’s no rush. If this is hard for you to tell, we can wait a bit." She blew a column of smoke into the air-conditioned swirl above them.
"Nah," he said, leaning back in the chair and putting his hands on his knees. "Nah, I’m fine." He resumed his story.
"So I’m quite lifted, you know? I got four days off, I’m getting pretty loose off the stim-alcohol mix, and Janeira’s on the other side of the table giving me all the right signals. And at one point I look over, and I make eye contact with one of the Home Guard guys.
"This guy had the weirdest look. He was staring right at me when I looked over, but still it felt like he couldn’t see me somehow. At first I thought it was ‘cause of my skin, since there aren’t many halfbreeds like me running around on the upper decks. But then I realized it was because of the way I was sitting. I was sitting on the back of my chair with my feet on the seat, and station regs frown upon that, you see. I felt ridiculous suddenly, like a kid in a lunchroom who was about to catch a whack from the minder. And, I don’t know, maybe that was exactly what made me do it, but out of nowhere I looked back at him and then pursed my lips in a little kiss.
"And just as I do it his eyes sort of widen a little bit, and Janeira notices me doing it and looks back, and when she sees who I just did it to she goes into this barely-subdued fit of laughter, and then the other people at the table catch on, and all the while the guy’s just standing there, glaring back at me with the meanest god damn expression you ever saw. I felt this weird combination of fear and elation, like I was playing this danger game and it could go either way, you know, and I think I acted it too. But it was all for show, really. As soon as I made that air-kiss, something deep inside of me just went ‘oh man, you did it now,’ and this creeping sense of dread set in.
"So after staring at me for a few more seconds the guy breaks his gaze and goes back to looking around, guarding the egger guy, and the egger by this point is talking with another guy who’s arrived at the table. Things are quiet for a few minutes, and I kind of stop worrying about that glare and start thinking I lucked out, you know, got away with it. And then suddenly there’s this mad shuffle of movement, and the egger stands up and kind of stumbles back, and the guy he was talking to is just kind of sitting in his chair shaking, and something black and round falls from his hand, under the table.
"Took me a while to notice that the grunt who’d been staring at me was holding out a little pistol-shaped thing in the guy’s direction. He had this intense look of concentration on his face, but hateful too, like he was gonna end this guy right then and there. A couple of seconds pass and the guy’s just sitting there, jiggling and foaming at the mouth, and all the grunts are just kind of staring, and I mean, us too, everybody in there is just staring at this guy get slowly roasted.
"Then all of a sudden the soldier stops and the guy just slumps forward on the table. The Home Guard guys go into this big huffing kind of secure-the-perimeter dance and one of them leads the egger away. We’re just sitting there slack-jawed, looking at the whole thing unfold, right? And then I notice that, sure enough, the one who’d been staring at me is making a beeline for our table, and my feeling of dread just comes powering back. We’re all kind of rattled by the scene, so as he approaches we’re sort of half-standing up. My friend was about to say something to him, but he just walks right up to me and grabs my arm. He’s pretty flustered, like he doesn’t know himself exactly what he’s gonna do next, but there’s this anger in his eyes, this absolute insane rage, you know?
"So he grabs my arm and I instinctively resist, right? I don’t know what he wants with me, so I kinda pull my arm back and it makes him lose his balance momentarily. I start to say something, but just as I’m starting the sentence he whirls around and just smacks – he’s carrying this compact bullpup piece with a chromed handle-end , right, and he just smacks it right into the bridge of my nose.
"Now, I’m no fighter. I grew up in a KK creche, never been in a scrap in my life, never had much interest in any of the fighting sports. So I guess up until that moment I had a pretty dim idea of what could happen and how bad it could be. Man, it was bad. First thing, my eyes just open up. I mean a full force torrent. I couldn’t see anything. There was this disgusting crack, and I fell back down on the chair with this slick heat spreading all over my mouth and down my neck. I wanted to say or do something, but I was way too shocked to do anything but sit there and blink and sputter.
"Jaseira told me later that the guy took another look at everyone around the table, just sort of coldly took stock of the situation and then decided it was well within bounds to do it again, so he did. Twice. The second one made me black out, thankfully."
She regarded him with what she hoped was a compassionate look. He was tugging at his nose contraption again.
"I was too scared to register a complaint but I found out a couple days later that Jaseira had gone and done it anyway, behind my back. She was way more angry about the whole thing than I was. I guess maybe she felt partly responsible because she’d laughed at the guy too.
"Anyway, we never saw him again. I got some kind of standardized letter of apology from their station commander a couple weeks later, but it didn’t say anything about what they’d done with him or whether they’d even done anything at all."
"You’re positive it was him?" she asked.
"Yeah. I wouldn’t have called you guys otherwise. I’m not stupid. I know things have a way of getting out despite best intentions, and I know this isn’t gonna make me very popular with the guy or his cronies. I just need the money. I’m splitting."
"A few of you are, huh?"
"Yeah. Just doesn’t feel right around here anymore. I mean, we worked for the glory of the State before there was a big man at the top. We worked for the State because of what it represents. And there’s one guy up there now with everything under his heel. What happened to the needs of the many outweighing the gains of the one? I mean, I like what he’s doing, some of it anyway. The mood here is more optimstic than I’ve ever seen it, and there’s this really strong sense of purpose, but I just, I don’t know. I guess I got my reservations about what kind of foundation it’s all built on."
"Where are you gonna go?"
"I’d rather not talk about that, if it’s all the same." He looked at her for a few seconds, then gave a rueful little half-smile.
"Okay," she said, giving the signal for the recorder to be shut off. "Okay, well, I think we have everything we need. Your compensation should be in your account already. Thanks for your candor, Mr. Sitsui."
It was evening in the office-box of Executive Editor Harben Mullar, and outside its two small windows the studio assistants were busily disassembling the day’s sets, tools whizzing and clicking under the artificial light. She was standing in front of his desk. Her finished piece was lying upon it.
"The story was corroborated by three of the four other witnesses. The girl has been relocated to a different part of the region. I wasn’t able to get a hold of her."
Mullar didn’t look at her. He drummed his fingers on the table. "Okay," he said.
"Sitsui himself says he doesn’t think the attack was racially motivated, but I think the story will speak for itself."
"Uh-huh."
"It’s funny. He has this ancient reconstructive wire-mesh thing in his nose. Vherokior tech from hundreds of years back. I asked him why he didn’t just get it regrown. Said he needed the reminder to not do stupid things. All very dramatic."
Mullar nodded. Bi-di-dim,bi-di-dim, went his fingers on the table.
"Everything checks out. Heth was with the Home Guard at the time, and he’d been assigned to the station in question just three weeks earlier. He was dismissed four months after the incident. The official reason was budget cuts, but this wasn’t an isolated incident and I doubt his superiors could ignore that type of thing for very long."
Mullar ceased his tapping and leaned back in his chair. He sighed. "I know it all checks out," he said. "It’s a good piece, Rekka."
His tone had a terribly familiar ring to it. She looked at him for a long while.
"No way, Harb," she began.
"Yup. Just got a call from Agency Central. They’re redlighting the piece."
"No way, Harb," she said.
"Yup. Indefinite standby. Directive came from right up top."
"But it’s a good piece. It’s inbounds. It’s not a bullet." Her voice was rising. "I thought we agreed, we’re just illustrating… "
"We agreed, Rekka, but you know as well as I do that if AC decides we can’t run it, then we can’t run it. It’s out of my hands."
"Did they give a reason, at least? Or is it the usual need-to-know bullshit?"
Mullar fished a cigarette out of his case. "Take tomorrow off," he said, screwing it between his lips. "There’ll be time to talk after the weekend."
She stood there, staring at him. For a while she stared, as he clicked open a small lighter and briefly bathed the end of his cigarette in blue flame. He looked at her with resigned firmness and blew a plume of smoke into the space between them.
She turned on her heel and walked out.
The door shut on the office of Harben Mullar, and as it did the studio’s lights winked out, one by one by one.
Kezti Sundara, Grand Admiral of Amarr's Imperial Navy, stood alone inside the massive cathedral, dwarfed by the icons of eternity that glinted distantly in the lamplight. He remained utterly still, head leaned towards the vaulted ceiling. Quiet times were hard to come by in the Empire these days.
There was a metallic clank. Behind Sundara, on the other side of the cathedral, the massive doors slowly swung open. Footsteps echoed off the marble floor, then stopped.
"Welcome, Captain," Sundara said without turning around.
"Admiral," the Captain said.
"Captain, why do you think you're here?" Sundara asked in a quiet but clear voice.
"Tell me, sir," the Captain said in noncommittal tones.
Sundara noticed the Captain's reticence. He turned and stared directly into the Captain's eyes. "We're going to war, Captain. Fulfilling our lives' purpose. Aren't you pleased?" he said, with the slightest hint of irony.
"I really couldn't say, sir."
The Admiral sighed. "Alright. Speak freely. It'll be the last time in a long while, so enjoy it while it lasts."
The Captain made as if to speak, hesitated, and shut his mouth again. He broke the gaze and looked at the cathedral walls, whose tinted windows had changed hue and added a shining bronze to the evening's red rays. Eventually he said, "I don't think we can win this war. I don't even think there should be a war."
"Recent events pass you by, Captain?" the Admiral said. "I hear we had some action. A bit of revolt, even."
"Sir-"
"The largest armada of Minmatar forces ever seen crosses over into our space, abducts millions of souls and causes untold destruction and havoc in the life of perfectly innocent people. The only thing that saves us right before the wave breaks is an intervention so definite and miraculous you could almost call it divine. And you, a leader of the Emperor's own holy fleet," the Admiral added, walking close enough to the Captain that their chests nearly met, "Don't think there should be a war."
This time the Captain held his gaze. "No, sir. I don't."
"Explain yourself."
"We're still reeling after the Minmatar onslaught. We're changing leaders, which always throws a spanner into the works-"
"Master politico-theologians say we're experiencing a glorious sea change of unprecedented proportions, with nothing but celestial glory and heavenly fate that awaits us."
"Theologians can suck my Apoc, sir. We're the ones manning the guns."
Sundara betrayed a smile. "Alright. Carry on."
"Look, sir, I'm as happy as the next man that Sarum is back in power. I honestly am. But we're a sea of people, vast and heavy. She'll need time to route everyone to her cause, even the ones who believe in it. And if the Reclaiming is to restart in earnest, we'll need to do it properly right from the start. The effort won't allow anything less than a unified front, a genuinely unified one; not just the sycophants and paranoia of Karsoth's old court. We need to clean house before we move into anyone else's."
"You've given this some thought, Captain."
"Well, my superiors insist on adding complexities to my job, sir. I'm merely trying to adapt."
***
The Grand Admiral thought this over. He was sitting in a very comfortable chair, considering very unpleasant things. His Captain stood before him, a small figure in a vast and well-lit room. They were in a penthouse within shouting distance of the Crystal Boulevard. Lower military orders were ensconced in bunkers beneath the Boulevard's translucent shields, but the Admiral refused to let himself be cowed into those. Besides, in his career he'd attended many long meetings in close quarters with overexcited navy brass, and he knew exactly what it would be like. People thought better, up here in the fresh air.
"Complexities such as?"
The Captain took a deep breath.
"Aside from the time we need to sort out internal chaos, the external situation is so fragile that we can barely do anything at all. You can't sneeze in Luminaire without both our side and theirs locking and loading. If we fire even one volley ... well, their captains might have sense to hold back, but CONCORD will roar right in and stomp around, getting everyone excited, and sooner or later some idiot hotshot will see his path to glory. Everything gets set off, and all that's left of every planet in Luminaire is a series of smoking craters."
"Duly noted, Captain," the Admiral said. "We can't start another war in Luminaire, which burns some of our hawks no end. And we certainly can't ignore or withdraw from CONCORD unless we want to supercharge the current chaos. What else?"
The Captain, staring straight forward, kept a carefully blank expression. "There is something else, sir?"
"Captain, we just lost an entire planet to a madman. You've served under me for years. This is no time for doubts or secret thoughts. What else? And stand at ease, for goodness' sake."
The Captain maintained her stance but her voice softened somewhat. She said, "Sir ... what are we going to do about the capsuleers?"
Anteson Ranchel, who had been Vice Admiral of the Gallente Federation Navy right up until the point his predecessor made one of the biggest military blunders in Federation history, gave his best Captain a big grin. "Well now," he said, "That's a bit of a problem. A group of people so powerful they're practically a faction unto themselves. Immortal, fearless and wealthy beyond imagining. Born of all four empires but beholden, in truth, to no one but themselves. And utterly untapped, in this little skirmish of ours."
"We need them, sir."
"Of course we do, Captain. They'll turn the tide of the war. Every capsuleer worth their pod should be taking a stand right now, and helping the forces of right against the tyranny and violence that envelops us."
The Captain nodded.
"And where, might I ask," the Admiral continued, "should that stand be taken?"
"A long way from here, if it were up to me, sir," the Captain said. "Last thing we need is opposing forces of pod pilots shooting at each other right outside our planet."
The Admiral smiled. "Good. I'm glad I've got some people left with more brains than bravery. So where, Captain, do you suggest we put them?"
***
"The dark end of space, ma'am."
"If that's a euphemism, Captain," the Grand Admiral said, "Believe me, I've heard enough of them already."
For a Minmatar war room, it made a number of concessions to sanity. There were only two persons there, not several representatives arguing about policy or sharpening their weapons. The walls had tactical maps on them, not tribe banners, and the surfaces of the recon tables were completely free of small arms, painblades and replica Khuumaks.
"Long meetings, ma'am?"
"If I ever see another member of the Minmatar government, whether Republic or Nation, it'll be an eon too soon, Captain. Might end up putting them the same place you're suggesting we put our capsuleers. Sounds like a rotten use of good people, though."
"The government?"
"The capsuleers."
"Not really, ma'am," the Captain said. "We need the lowsec territories. We need the resources there for anything and everything we'll be doing elsewhere."
The Admiral resumed her pacing around the room. Voices could be heard from somewhere far outside, either arguments or chants; it was hard to tell which, sometimes. "I don't like this, Captain. We did a full frontal attack and it was one of the most glorious moments in Minmatar history. We beat the Amarr nearly to a pulp, we flexed our might like never before since the great revolution. And we freed millions."
"Yes, sir. We beat the Amarr nearly to a pulp."
"Captain-"
"Up until the point where they burnt us to cinders and brushed away what was left of the ashes."
The Admiral rubbed her eyes. Her name was Kasora Neko, she was in charge of the Minmatar Fleet and she had not slept for a long time. "Captain, I've had three meetings today with various Minmatar political officials who think that brandishing a Khuumak gives them free rein with war metaphors. I value your services, but understand that if you start the same, I will turn your innards into poetry."
"Ma'am."
"As it happens, I agree with you. I think we do need the capsuleers, more than many people realize. I think they're going to turn the tide of the war. I think they're going to be the war, in all honesty. There is no way we can get away twice with the stunt we pulled at Halturzhan, which means we'll need resources for a longer-term war, and we'll need to move around CONCORD. That means lowsec, and the only people crazy enough to fight to the death to hold those territories are the capsuleers. And that's not all. You know what's the most valuable resource in lowsec, Captain?"
"Well, there's Omber, and Noxcium, and probably Hemorph-"
"It's people."
"Right."
"You're going to ask me what they refine to, Captain."
"The thought did cross my mind, ma'am, but you've had a long day."
"We need them for our efforts. And the Amarr want them for whatever hellish plans they're cooking up. The Empire fleets won't dare come into our territory again, not when they don't know what we're capable of, and not while they're sorting out their problems. So this Reclaiming," she spat the word, "or whatever they want to call their excuse for today's dose of misery, is going to start in lowsec, where we've got millions of people we can't possibly defend."
***
"And it goes beyond that, Captain."
The Captain was silent. His superior had not asked him a question.
"We've only just begun," the Admiral continued. The garden was quiet apart from the bubble of the sand waterfall and the distant whispers of the laser birds. "This first achievement is one of many to follow, so long as we can keep everything together on the home front."
The Captain looked to the birds. Hearing his Admiral, who had served in the Caldari Navy for a long while, criticize the State's infrastructure like this set his nerves on edge. There'd been enough instability already without the high powers consistently making it worse by acknowledging it.
"What do you think about going into lowsec, Captain?" the Admiral asked.
The Captain cleared his throat. Fleet Admiral Morda Engsten was an intimidating presence, and when she asked a question like that, she wanted a good answer.
"Well, ma'am ..." The birds were approaching, their halogen outlines flickering in the sunny air.
The Admiral sat down near the sand waterfall. "Speak, Captain," she said, not unkindly.
"I think it's an excellent idea whose implications are sure to be vast, ma'am."
"You think it's dumb."
"Like a rock, ma'am."
Engsten reached out and put her hand into the waterfall, palm upwards, fingers spread out. The sand flowed around them unrestrained. "Tell me more, Captain. You're not going to ruin anything, least of all your own career."
The Captain allowed himself to doubt this. Nonetheless, he had been asked a question, and he admired the Admiral. He took a deep breath. "I don't understand why we're going into low security space, sir. It feels like we're running away. Say what you wish about Heth's rise to power, he lined us up at last, and made us kick hard at the Gallente. We've got Caldari Prime back, which I didn't think would happen in my lifetime if it ever did at all. We've got a war here, Admiral."
"That we do, Captain," Engsten said. "Now tell me what gains we're fighting for."
"Well, our people have been oppr-"
"The gains, Captain," the Admiral interrupted. "Not the ideology. I want our final military goal."
The Captain began, "Well, there is Luminai-...", then caught the Admiral's gaze and fell silent. He thought for a while, then said in quieter tones, "We're not talking about Luminaire, are we, ma'am?"
The Admiral slowly shook her head.
"Ma'am ... we're taking this all the way, aren't we?"
The Admiral nodded without smiling.
"Luminaire is a bomb right now, one that could be set off by anything and which nobody can control." It felt like he was mindreading the entire military council in absentia. "So we go into lowsec space to test out our capsuleers and build up resources. And as we make those gains, we also gain territory. Gallente lowsec territory. Which brings us closer to Gallente highsec space."
"And Luminaire at last," Admiral Engsten said.
"And Luminaire at last, ma'am," the Captain said, a slight tremor in his voice. "Along with everything else. We'll take their edges, and then there'll be nothing left but the center. We'll do it, Admiral."
The Fleet Admiral put her hand in the sand again. "And there is no doubt in your mind that we can do this?"
"Of course not. We're Caldari. And we're in the right."
The Admiral smiled. The sand hissed as it flowed through her fingers.
***
Aside from the hiss, the room was entirely silent. The five Jovians inside sat and stared into the ether. They were surrounded by polycarbonate windows that showed the starry space outside.
The hiss came from an open comms line.
The Jovians waited.
***
In four different elevators on four different stations, two diplomats got in on the top floor. One, who represented an Empire Faction, took out from his pocket a small datapadand cracked a joke about wars. The other, who represented CONCORD, accepted the datapad, signed it with his identity key, and laughed at the joke.
The elevator ride was long and the diplomats spoke swiftly, coding and signing the necessary digital back-and-forth with practiced hands. By the time they got out, the four empires had petitioned CONCORD to ratify an emergency capsuleer militia procedure, and were now officially at war.
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The Garden was a man-made construct through and through, several acres of carefully tended flora and woodland encased in a massive transparent dome. Souro Foiritan, president of the Gallente Federation, had it constructed long ago as a meeting place between dignitaries of the various empire factions.
In this it served its function admirably, for a twofold reason. First, a peaceful garden was much more conducive to a genial atmosphere and agreeable spirits than a meeting room ever could be. A visiting diplomat, weighted by worries and demands, would feel so much more calm sitting by a babbling brook or a tree in budding bloom than he ever could on the top floor of a high-rise, no matter how good its view. And second, it was so well secured with anti-eavesdropping technology that visitors could discuss the darkest topics of their hearts' desires without so much as a glance over their shoulders.
The dome's outer surface was dotted with holographic projectors that melded in with the surface, making it impossible to detect from the air, and the materials of its hull utterly blocked every possible emanation from within: light, sound, heat signature, electric signals. Its insides were beset not only with equipment that regularly scanned for any anomalous signals, but motion-sensitive audio-scramblers that made it impossible even for servants and cohorts to hear what their leaders were saying to one another.
With all the layers necessary for its shell to be impermeable, real transparency was not an option. Instead, the rivets holding its outer plates together had inset tiny cameras that continuously recorded the outside view and passed the imagery along to a central broadcast mechanism inside the dome that used volumetric projectors to cast it onto the dome's inner wall. The effect was exactly the same as if you were looking right through the wall, and removed the sense of claustrophobia and secrecy that otherwise would have hovered over the Garden. It was peaceful, and perfect.
Mentas Blaque, Head Senator of the Gallente Federation, walked down a stone-tiled trail, past brush and brooks, until he arrived in a small circle of paths surrounded by tidily cut grass and several tall trees. Birdsong emanated from the trees, and unseen insects clicked and chirruped from the bush. There was even a small fountain in the distance, hissing gently at the world.
And in the circle, by the edge of the green grass, he encountered two men. One stood at attendance. The other hung suspended from a silver rod, his face blocked by a deathskin mask.
The man who stood was Souro Foiritan, president of the Gallente Federation, leader of one of the four major Empires in New Eden, and Commander-in-Chief of the Gallentean armed forces at a time when they had just suffered the worst invasion and armed conflict in Federation history. His maroon outfit, which usually flowed with him like a second skin, looked worn, crinkly and unwashed. He had his head tilted slightly upward, as if watching the clouds. Even from a distance, Blaque could see how tired he was.
The suspended man was unknown to Blaque. He was fit, and something in his musculature - thinly covered beneath tight white clothes - brought to mind a military background. The deathskin mask, a covering of breathable material that overlaid his face, was expressionless.
Blaque walked up to them but said nothing.
Foiritan regarded him. Blaque noticed his hair was dirty, too, its oily sheen catching the sun's rays. There were bags under his eyes, and for some reason his knuckles were bruised.
"You can speak freely in here, you know," Foiritan said.
Blaque nodded.
"You don't seem too curious about why you're here in the first place."
"I was summoned by the highest authority in the Federation," Blaque replied icily. He and Foiritan had been at each other's political throats long before the invasion. "I assume you had your reasons."
Foiritan furrowed his eyebrows but didn't comment. He turned to the suspended man.
The silver device which held him up, a modified medical instrument not often used, was called a dead man's needle. It was a long metallic stake affixed to a cross-like stand, and it was literally melded onto the man it held. The stake had small circular protuberances that went into the man's back along the ridges on his spine, holding on to them like rings on a finger and supporting his body from the ground. Some of those circles would be pumping sedatives into his spine and the back of his head, keeping him asleep and mildly sedated. His hands were fixed at the body's sides, and his legs hung straight down. His skin, what could be seen of it beyond his clothes and mask, had dark purple bruises turning to yellow.
"This is Jordan Keel," Foiritan said, and walked a slow circle around the crucified man. "You wouldn't know it, but he helped bring about unprecedented events in New Eden's history."
Blaque regarded the man briefly before returning his gaze to Foiritan. "He seems a little worse for wear in that regard. Sir."
"So it might seem. In fact," Foiritan looked at Keel's suspended body and smiled humorlessly, "compared to what happened to some of the people whose lives he ruined, his own seems absolutely pristine."
The leaves whispered in the trees, brushed by hidden wind generators. Everything was too real here to be true.
Blaque walked closer and inspected Keel. He snapped his fingers in front of the man's face, and poked him in the ribs. Keel didn't react, nor blink or twitch. Blaque raised an eyebrow.
"The needle-sleep only lets him react to intense stimuli. Massive pain, for instance," Foiritan said.
"What do you need me for?" Blaque said after some hesitation.
"There is a war on."
"I know."
"A person's loyalties will get tested in a war."
"I know, Mister President."
"You weren't always a politician, Blaque. I've seen your locked files. I know what you did in the service of the Federation. There's one particular image, the remains of a Serpentis ship crew your troop once boarded, that'll crop up in my darker dreams for quite a while yet, I fear."
"There is a point to this, sir?"
"I need you to kill this man," Foiritan said, the same humorless smile on his face.
"Go to hell," Blaque replied and turned to leave. He had gone a few steps before Foiritan's voice said, "If you don't, then the aftermath is on your conscience."
"Don't associate me with your little criminals or whatever they do with their lives."
"Not his life, Admiral. Our lives, yours and mine. This man started a war."
Blaque stopped at that. Foiritan walked up to him and said, "It was on Keel's initiative, along with god knows how many others, that the Gallente Federation was attacked, invaded, and forced to capitulate under circumstances and terms that can be called nothing less than brutal."
Blaque turned to face him. A breeze from the hidden fans tugged at them, wafting the scent of flowers and grass through their senses. The man on the silver needle seemed to have no odor at all.
"We lost thousands of people in that invasion, Blaque," the president said. "They sabotaged our defenses, and they came in, and they tore everything to pieces. What they could have achieved with diplomacy they did with fire and death, reducing the lives of everyone who survived on that planet to a grey nightmare. And this one right here, this man who was supposed to be one of our own, he held the door right open for them."
In a grave but incredulous tone, Blaque said, "So you called me in here, sir, because instead of having this man tried by a military tribunal, you want the highest ranking senator in the Federation to put a bullet into his head."
"No. The person standing before me is not the Federation's highest ranking senator."
Blaque's expression turned to frost. "You just presided over the greatest military setback in Federation history, Mister President. Your power base is unstable and you're tottering on its wavering peak. I suggest you think very carefully before destabilizing it any further, or dismissing any political entities you may see as your enemies."
"That's good advice. It's exactly what I'd expect from the head of my new intelligence agency, and the overseer of its special projects division."
"...Beg pardon?"
Foiritan smiled, this time genuinely, and looked out through the dome of the garden. In the distance, beyond the land and the air, could be seen the faint crystal spires of New Hueromont, some so high they pierced the clouds. "The entire Federation is tottering. We've been hit so hard we barely know who we are anymore."
"So let's hit back," Blaque said, looking at those same crystal spires.
Foiritan didn't answer, and appeared lost in the view.
"You know," he said after a while, "I grew up in this area. I've had this view for so long, as man and boy, I can't ever imagine the city not being here. And I honestly never thought I would be in a position to even contemplate such a thing, living in a world where other people are actively seeking the destruction of something that feels not only like the reality of today but the very fabric of my memories. It's like they want to wipe out a part of what makes me the person I am."
He turned to Blaque. "I made a terrible mistake. I allowed myself to imagine that this universe was composed of good and honest people who could be induced to find a solution to any problem, no matter how severe. And now I find myself playing catch-up with wickedness.
"That's our problem, we Gallente," he continued. "We can't hit back. We're this great hulking beast that's been asleep for eons, being poisoned by ticks and leeches. We're full of rage and energy now, but if we roar into action unprepared we'll do nothing but get pummeled into submission. Worse, we'll still have those parasites in our blood, weakening us and hampering our fight, and it'll sap our spirit until we claw ourselves to death merely trying to get them out. I want those parasites gone, Blaque. I want them eliminated and I want our people to know it."
"And you want me to pull the trigger," Blaque said, with something approaching resignation.
"Blaque-"
"How'd you even find this guy?"
"We'd been running data mining on all registered actions, civilian and military, covering the time span that led to the great betrayal. His name came up, we ran some matching statistics, he looked more and more likely. I signed a court order for immediate retraction of his statutory rights, then looked into his personal files and immediately found communications that clearly and directly linked him to the Tripwire fiasco. We hauled him in, and immediately he put up a front. Locked up, wouldn't say a thing. You ever see those guys, Blaque? You ever deal with someone who stonewalls you from the first moment on?"
"Every day on the senate floor, Mister President," Blaque said flatly. He sighed. "But most of my life I've dealt in warfare rather than politics."
"Then you know what it means when your enemy tunnels in."
Blaque looked to the crystal spires, then gave a nod so small it was barely perceptible. "So you had our people in white go to work on him?" he said.
"Almost. I had them all ready. But before we were set to start, I looked at the pictures of some of the victims, and I looked at Keel sitting in the interrogation chamber. And I lost it, Blaque. I went in there and had them take off all the restraints, then sent out the guards on orders not to return until I gave word. I had Keel standing before me, as free as I was, and if he wasn't quite as angry then he certainly wasn't in the mood to talk. And then I beat him to within an inch of his life."
Blaque looked at Foiritan with a new-found respect. "That so?"
"He talked. Gave us some information we needed."
"There's diplomacy for you."
"You would have done the same," Foiritan said.
"What makes you say that?" Blaque asked.
Foiritan waved his hand angrily at the world around them. "Look at it!" he yelled. "How can you possibly see this, and all it means to us, and not want to do everything you possibly can to protect it? How can you not want to lay down your life to save it from harm?"
He stalked over to the prisoner, his face turning red. "We helped them," he said in a tone full of quiet murder. "We did all we could for them and their rotten little empire. We poured money into their open hands. And now they do this to us. We didn't kill or destroy anyone over there. We didn't ruin their businesses. Before this all started I was set to make the greatest economic concession in history, merely to make sure that someone else's goddamn home," he kicked the needle at the word, and it vibrated in the breeze, "could be kept from falling apart. Everything could be solved by diplomacy and goodwill, I thought. And now I have before me a pitiable man, one of my own Gallente citizens, who was partly responsible for the loss of an entire planet and the deaths of countless of our people."
"So why didn't you finish it off?" Blaque asked. "Why not end him, or throw him to the wolves? The entire Federation feels the same way you do."
"Would you?" Foiritan asked him. Blaque fell silent.
"I need to know who's on my side, Blaque. Now more than ever, I need allies, people I can rely on to get things done. You dealt in warfare, where the enemies stayed enemies and where words have weight. All my life I've dealt in politics, where my friends could be my enemies and where the words I hear are just words, fitted and molded to the occasion. I need to know who I can trust."
"You want me to kill a comatose man."
"I want you to find the traitors, all of them, and I want you to bring them to justice. Whatever it takes." Foiritan reached into his coat and pulled out a datapad and a gun, both of which he laid on the ground before Blaque. "On the datakey is incontrovertible evidence that Jordan Keel was involved in the Tripwire incident. It would be enough to get him tried for treason in any court and punished accordingly."
"So do it," Blaque said, but without much conviction. "Have him executed."
"I could," Foiritan said. "But that's not enough. There are others like him out there and I need someone with the experience and the guts to root them out. Someone willing to go all the way."
Blaque stared at him in amazement. He said, not disapprovingly, "What happened to you, Souro?"
Foiritan rubbed his eyes. The bags under them were dark. "In my time I've committed acts that were selfish or even outright wrong, but so have you and everyone else. We did it for ourselves, but somewhere in our hearts we always did it for the Federation as well, because we believe we truly are the best for this empire. This here, though, this is ..." He faltered, and waved his hand vaguely at Keel. "Being in power at peacetime, that's easy. But being in power when things go wrong and you have to fix them by any means necessary, that's hard. That's when you find out who can act as well as talk, and who's just a blowhard."
Another breeze passed through, carrying the garden to them in its invisible hands. It was far too serene here for deaths and treachery.
Foiritan said, "The world has changed. We change with it. Or we die, buried in the grass. It's that simple now."
Blaque knelt and picked up the datapad and the gun. He rose and weighed one in each hand, like hearts on a scale. It had slowly dawned on him that they stood not on the cliff's edge debating the fall, but had possibly long since gone over, and were merely looking at the ever approaching abyss. "You're right," he said in a shaky voice. "You monster. You're absolutely right. I don't even like you, Foiritan, and you're right. I wish to god you weren't."
"So do I, believe me," Foiritan said.
"You know how you're going to look if you do this. The measures instigated, the freedoms prohibited. .. Even if you're successful - especially if you're successful - you're going to be a tyrant. You'll be feared and hated. And so will I, as your hit man."
"Then that's the role you'll have to play, like all the rest of us actors."
Something in Blaque gave way, though whether it was the rising revulsion of a darkened path he thought he'd long since left, or the dismantling of the last obstruction to his breakneck passage there, he really couldn't tell. His feelings broke through, and he screamed at Foiritan, "This isn't a play!" His arm shot out, pistol in hand, the barrel aimed directly at Keel's head. "Is this what you want, President? Is this what you're ready for? You're brave when it's fists in a room, but how many times have you looked a man in the eyes before you killed him? How can your conscience ever take that on?!"
Foiritan waited, expressionless, until Blaque had lowered the gun and caught his breath.
"Yes, it's a test, of loyalty and guts," Foiritan said to him. "Everything is, these days. But those men whose deaths he caused? They were just as much your responsibility as mine." He stepped closer to Blaque and took hold of his gun arm, raising it to his own sternum as if he were the condemned. "You owe them this, in your own conscience and soul."
Blaque looked into his eyes, and whatever dark fellowship he saw there broke the last barrier. A wave of revulsion passed over him, washing over his new, unwavering purpose. His face wrinkled in disgust at himself and he said, "Damn you. Alright. But I will not murder," and he turned to Keel and shot the man in the kneecap.
"This is what happens when things get ugly!" he yelled, loud enough to set the birds flying from nearby trees. "This is what you've sanctioned, Souro! You can undersign orders for hunt and interrogation, and damn it, I'll follow them to the end, but will you stand it when the screaming .. when the screaming ... starts." He faltered, and looked back to Keel in amazement. The prisoner hung from the silver needle, serene and quiet. The blood pouring from the gaping wound in his knee was staining his white clothes a deep maroon. He showed no signs of waking up.
"Good job, Blaque," Foiritan said, a smile not quite crossing his lips. "I need a man who will do horrible things for our Federation, but who'll detest doing so. I need a civilized man, so that I can be the monster."
"What ... but ...?" Blaque stammered.
"A body can't let out a scream if there's no mind to carry it."
When no response was forthcoming,Foiritan laid a hand on his shoulder, leaned close and said, not unkindly, "You just shot a clone."
Blaque stared at him, then at the datapad in his hand.
"Fake," Foiritan said.
Blaque stared back at Foiritan. His eyes bulged, and a vein started throbbing in his neck. He took a deep breath and said, "You trickster. You goddamn, good-for-nothing poli-"
His tirade was cut short by Foiritan's fist, which smashed into Blaque's cheek hard enough to spin him around and drop him onto the ground. The senator got up not with the shocked, angered or dazed look one might expect from someone who's just been clocked, but a curious expression. A red welt was rising on the skin over his cheekbone.
"Welcome to the new world," Foiritan said. "Don't forget who you are."
"Gloves off, I see," Blaque said.
"I needed to know where you stood. You'll be immersed in lies, disinformation and violence from now on. Might as well get used to it."
Blaque looked at him for a long time, and at the thing on the needle, and at the crystal spires in the distance. He was an ethical man, in his own mind, but a practical one as well, and decades in military service had tempered those ethics with a thorough understanding of humanity, particularly that wicked and terrible side which rose out of its murky depths only under duress. Through the rapidly fading mist of rage he realized that under enemy fire the most one could hope for was a leader cruel enough to do what needed to be done, and compassionate enough to understand why it needed doing.
"I am not at all sure, Mister President," Blaque said, his anger giving way to the dark humor that Foiritan had always admired in his adversary, "that this new world order should include the President striking his chief of internal security."
Foiritan kept up his poise, but Blaque noticed the slight untensing of shoulders as the president, "I'll say. I nearly broke my goddamn knuckles."
The sun was beginning to descend. The garden's ambient noise quieted accordingly.
"We need to align the people, and to do so we need a leader who fits the season. I'm going to be the monster, Blaque," the president said. "And you're going to be the thunder that announces my passage."
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This configuration was new to him. A beautiful one, though it lacked the smooth subtlety of the Kaulas patterns, the ones from before the revolution. The Thukker as a whole had tended toward violent motifs after the great save, its people too drunk on their own rage to remember they were free, and every creation from its cultural womb since then had in some way borne fury’s jagged stamp.
He set the object on the table. Before him was a wall, three quarters window, a tinted expanse of transnano stretching several meters to both sides and displaying the beginnings of a sunset upon the quarter beyond. Underneath the window was the small table, its contents cast in deep sun yellow, and at it he sat, his mood darkening with each passing minute.
He stood up, made his way to the desk in the opposite corner of the room and sat down at it. On the desk, a modcom was chirping.
"Shakor," he said.
"Emissary Shakor, this is Central," sounded the machine. "Your afternoon appointment just arrived at the compound. Are you ready to receive him?"
"Is this Sergeant Ermika speaking?"
"Yes, sir."
"Your name isn’t Central."
"Beg pardon, sir?"
"I said your name isn’t Central."
There was a brief pause, then a small nasal exhalation on the other end. "Thank you, sir. Forgot."
"No harm done, Sergeant. Let him in."
"Yes, sir."
Shakor leaned back. Resting his elbows on the chair’s metal arms, he locked his fingers together across his stomach, tilted his head back against the top of the headrest and let out a long breath. He rubbed his eyebrows smooth with two hard strokes. Then he stood up, straightened the front of his shirt with his hands and walked back over to the window. He was standing there, pensive, when the door buzzer sounded.
"Yes."
Sound of someone entering, then a voice. "Admiral Morata is here to see you, sir."
"Very well." Shakor turned half in the direction of the door and waited. There was a shuffling of footsteps, followed by brief silence.
"Good afternoon, Your Honor," came a voice.
"Hello, Hakram," replied Shakor warmly. "No need for formalities, least of all when they no longer apply." He cocked his head now in the other man’s direction, as if sniffing something out with his mind’s eye. "At ease, soldier," he said presently.
Hakram Morata, Vice Admiral of the Republic Fleet, veteran of hundreds of battles, stiffened a bit, then relaxed. He shook his head, slowly. "How do you always know?"
"Blind luck," said Shakor. "Have a seat."
The two men made their way over to the small table and sat down at each end of it. A cool draft played through the sparse chamber as the door slid closed.
"I’m assuming you’ve heard," said the Vice Admiral, removing his cap and straightening his carefully creased dark olive trousers. "About Yun." He studied Shakor.
"I heard something," said Shakor.
"It’s true."
"I have no doubt. Tonight, was it?"
"Yes," said Hakram. "A little under three hours from now."
"I see." Shakor cleared his throat. "How that boy has grown."
He stood up and went to a carved wooden cabinet set into the wall, from which he gingerly retrieved a glass bottle filled with an opaque liquid of darkest brown. He unstoppered it. "Care for a drop?" he asked, somewhat perfunctorily, as he began to pour the liquid into two small glasses.
Hakram smiled. "You know me."
"That I do," said Shakor, handing him one of the glasses. A rich aroma filled their corner of the large chamber. "To ours."
"To ours."
They drank. Shakor sat down again.
"So. What can I do for you today, Hakram?"
There was a studied silence, and then Hakram spoke. "Well, sir, I want to ask you to consider some of the things Keitan is going to talk about tonight."
"A-ha." Shakor’s brow creased. "Which things, in particular?"
"Well, he is going to cover a fair few subjects. For one, he’s going to urge you to come back." Shakor sat very still and did not react.
Hakram’s eyes fixed on the spiked orb sitting upon the table. He picked it up. "You’re really in a unique position to do the things that need doing, sir," he said, quietly.
"I’m not in a position to do anything," replied Shakor. "I’m tired of the things that need doing. I’ve been a member of this carnival for too long. I’m tired of collateral damage and lives on my conscience. Tired of getting tangled in the political underbrush."
"Tangled?" Hakram put the orb down. "But you dealt with the Elders, sir. You worked with the Thukkers. You circumvented every protocol there is."
"Yes, at the cost of a good woman’s political career and the stability of our government. Those aren’t dues paid lightly."
"But you did what needed to be done," Hakram said. "You shook things up enough for them to be set right again. Why finish with the job half done? There is a groundswell of support for you, at the public level as well as within the entire structure of government."
Shakor laughed. It was a deep and abrasive sound, the pounding of a punctured war drum. "Hakram. My boy. Do you think public support means anything, with things the way they are?"
A tiny blink escaped one of Hakram’s eyes, a momentary crack in his mask of equilibrium. He sat upright in his seat, glad, as so often before, that the old man was blind.
"Not the public’s, necessarily, but the ministers have…" he began.
"The ministers? That great thunderous gaggle of short-sighted polemicists? Oh, yes, I’m sure they love me. They’ll love me until I do something that doesn’t quite serve their interests, and then they’ll hem and haw and harrumph and draft legislation and set their lackeys to screaming, and before you know it we’re back to the low squabbling that keeps us stuck in the mud."
Abruptly he stopped there, and smoothed his eyebrows with a sharp upward motion of both hands. He stood up. Hakram waited, watching him intently.
"I’m not the person for it," said Shakor. He walked back over to the cabinet, found the bottle and returned.
"Sir…" said Hakram. Shakor quieted him with a gesture, then held out an open hand. He gave his glass to the old man.
"I appreciate your making the trip all the way out here," Shakor said, in a more convivial tone. He poured them two more drinks. "Did you have any problems getting in?"
"I was questioned a fair bit," said Hakram. "Nothing too bad."
"They know what they’re doing."
"I have no doubt, sir."
"If I’m not mistaken, there should be some domes perched on the horizon there." Shakor pointed in the direction of the window. "They’re synthesizing plants from the homeworld over there."
"Really?" said Hakram. He looked over Shakor’s shoulder. Past the sprawl of squat metal buildings beyond the window he saw three gigantic skulls jutting out of the landscape, retiring rays of sun laying checkered patterns over their silvery pates.
"Genesis vaults, they call them. They’re aiming to eventually have specimens of every known plant from Old Mother." Shakor took a sip of his drink.
"Impressive," said Hakram. "Very impressive. Wouldn’t have expected it from the Thukkers, to be perfectly honest."
Shakor set his drink on the table. "I wouldn’t have expected it from anyone," he said.
A period of silence passed between the two men, leaden with quiet consequence. Shakor was sitting with his elbows on his knees, flat palms pressed together, leaning forward. Hakram was sitting back, his hat in his lap and his left ankle resting on his right knee.
He switched legs, dusted a bit of lint off his calf and said "Maleatu… how can I get you to reconsider?"
And so the afternoon went.
***
"I have a message for you," said Hakram. He was standing by the window, looking out at the flat tops of the surrounding buildings, the tiny motes of windowlight like insect eyes in featureless faces.
Shakor raised his eyebrows and lifted his head slightly in the younger man’s direction. "Oh?" he said.
Hakram came back to his chair and seated himself. "You spoke of collateral damage earlier. About making sacrifices and never knowing whether they had any meaning."
Shakor nodded.
"Do you remember a decision of that sort that you made, twenty-six years ago, when you were fighting in Ammatar space?"
Shakor remained quiet, his face impassive.
"When the rest of the militia heads asked you to leave the front because your presence was bringing down too much heat on their heads?"
Shakor gave a slow nod, barely perceptible.
"When, despite their insistent cajoling and threatening, you stayed an extra two days in order to be able to gather crucial intel that would, it turned out, end up saving the lives of millions?"
"Yes, yes," said Shakor. "Very theatrical. You have my admiration. Get to the point."
"My message is from one of those commanders. Do you remember Silbraur Makusta?"
"Of course. He’s a high-ranking member of the Justice Department."
"Yes, but back then he led a group called the South Rixarn Army. It was one of the smaller militia groups active on the Derelik fringe back then."
Shakor’s eyebrows lowered and his jaw clenched. "I remember the SRA," he said.
"Close-knit group, largely family. Highly specialized. Came from a…"
"Hakram."
"What?"
"Just give me the message."
"Yes, sir. Senior Counsel Makusta heard through a common acquaintance in Fleet brass that I was going to go to the Sanctuaries to try and convince you to come back. When he did, he had this message delivered to me and said that it was to be given to you verbatim."
"I assume you’ve memorized it."
"You know me."
"Let’s hear it."
"Well, sir," Hakram began, then hesitated.
"Let’s hear it, Admiral," said Shakor.
"He wants you to know that every single one of them would have willingly chosen their fate, had they known the stakes."
There was a long pause.
"Very well, Admiral," said Shakor. "Thank you for coming."
***
As the mantle of dusk continued its gentle slide over the moon’s dry skin and its inhabitants began to lay themselves to rest, his modcom sounded again.
"This is Shakor."
"Emissary, Ambassador Keitan Yun has requested to speak with you."
He spun the orb in his hand for a few moments. How jagged it was.
"Put him through."
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When he dropped the golden vial, Antar knew he was a dead man.
They were in the garden of contemplation, Lerenge and he, arguing about the tenets of faith and their service to the Chamberlain. Both of them were privileged Holders who had done a lot of work in the royal court, and the constant friction of daily interaction had filed them into two smooth blocks of solid rock, smashed for so long against one another that they grated past with a minimum of fuss and agony, each waiting for the other to finally crack and break.
Before the vial had even touched the ground Antar was already kneeling for it, his fingers reaching for its shiny surface and his mind working on some suitable excuse. By the time he'd snatched it up again and put it in his pocket he had already decided not to say anything at all, and prayed instead that Lerenge would think the fallen object had been one of the golden buttons on his robe.
And Lerenge didn't seem to notice, going on as he did about the futility of self-devotion when there were so many issues to be dealt with every day. "You don't get anything done if you're on your knees in prayer all day," he said. "The Empire expects results."
Antar, who wanted to get out of this conversation before his trembling hands gave him away, forced himself to shrug and say, "Then I guess we'd better get to it." Lerenge sniffed at him and walked away.
Once he was alone, Antar walked over to one of the benches and sat down heavily. He felt the vial inside his pocket, pressing against his skin.
He had an appointment with the Chamberlain himself in less than a day's time. He needed to keep a clear head and not fill himself up with trash and paranoia.
So he'd gone into the garden of contemplation, picked his thousandth fight with a man who loathed him, and right in the middle of things he had started fiddling with the golden vial that contained his emergency supply of drugs. The golden vial that he had started bringing into the court for no reason whatsoever.
He rubbed his face with his hands, then spread them on the bench, leaned his head back and listened to the susurrus around him, with closed eyes and progressively calming breath.
It was not in the nature of man to deny his own nature. He enjoyed sitting on this bench and having the sun stroke his face. He also enjoyed doing drugs, not merely riding their highs but suffering their calamitous drops as well.
That last part had been a revelation. The pressure of living in high Amarr society, not to mention working for some of the most high-powered men in the Empire, was such that most everyone had to find some manner of release. This was natural and expected, and people dealt with it with prayer and piety. You were expected to suffer for your faith and that you did, meandering through the random mazes of humanity's constructs in the hope of finding enlightenment on the other side. The stress and the pressure meant that you had a need for God beyond the everyday.
But not everyone found themselves able to alleviate the stress through prayer, and sometimes would turn to self-flagellation. It was not uncommon for high-ranking officials to be seen on slow walks around the many gardens in the Chamberlain's courts, gingerly feeling their way towards benches or tables after an evening of bodily abuse. This was smiled at, if not actively encouraged, by the church.
Drug use was forbidden, as was imbibing too much alcohol, synthetic drinks or anything except the mildest brews. But to Antar it came to much the same. It made no sense to self-harm, nor to lose yourself in invocation, because both depended on your strength and willpower to see it through. When you gave your autonomy over to someone else as your faith demanded, Antar felt that the very least God could do in return was to provide an unblocked passageway to Him.
He had gone to the drugs out of frustration and shame at being unable to take the pressure, and out of unwillingness to devote himself to the increasingly useless prayer and pain-threshold testing. And in the aftermath of fugue and tremors, he found himself at last.
He was supposed to suffer and that he had certainly done, spending what felt like centuries in panicked agony of visions, sweats and paranoia. But when it wore off, all he could think of was to do it again. The highs gave him sacrament and the lows gave him vindication. It felt perversely like being closer not only to God but to himself as well: Being true to his own nature and true to the punishing demands of his faith, by enjoying life to the fullest and then suffering for it.
It was the one and perfect way of achieving wholeness, and Lerenge had embraced it wholeheartedly.
He got up, brushed off his robes and looked around. The day was drawing to an end. Sunlight glinted off a nearby statue of a Slaver hound, cast in bronze. Its presence comforted him, for if God had created this vicious, merciless animal, then surely there must have been some concession on God's side to the animalistic nature of human beings.
Antar headed towards his quarters. Tomorrow would be a demanding day and he needed to clear his head.
***
"My dear boy, so good to see you," the Chamberlain said. His antechamber glimmered in the early daylight. The ceiling was high and ended in tinted windows whose glass changed hue according to the strength of sunlight. In the afternoon it would be golden and regal, and in the early evening a bronzed blood red, but the mornings were bright and uplifting. From beyond came the sound of birds.
The walls were covered with icons: Woven tapestries illustrated with the crests of the five Heirs and beset with their iconic gemstones, small crests and smaller paintings of Holders that had performed high service to the Empire, and massive decorations of all sorts that depicted the glorious Emperors of ages past. There was barely room for God.
Antar, still kneeling, murmured into his chest, "I am always at your service, Your Honor." There were no guards inside the room, which was not that unusual. They were for decoration as much as anything, and the Chamberlain often sent them out so he could discuss personal business.
"And so polite as well!" Chamberlain Karsoth said with a laugh. "I trust you've had a good stay in the palace quarters."
"They never fail to bring me happiness," Antar said. This was true. He'd emptied the vial last night and disposed of it for good. The visions had been quite marvelous.
"That's good to hear. I like hearing positive words. We should have more of that in this place, us pitiful, unworthy sinners."
Antar remained silent. He'd always liked the Chamberlain, an opinion that had him in the minority among the court, but the man's conversation style was dangerously comfortable. A genial chat with the wrong word let loose could mean a trip to the cleansing pits.
"Are you contemplating the heavens?" Karsoth asked him in silky tones.
"Always, my lord," Antar said. "How may I serve you?"
This time the Chamberlain did not answer. The silence was so complete Antar could hear his own heartbeats, and he realized with a tiny bloom of terror that the birdsong had fallen silent as well. The audioblocks had been set down.
He kept his eyes resolutely on the ground. Before him he heard the noise of the Chamberlain rising to his feet, the metal pistons in his legs hissing as they supported the man's frame. There was a thunk and another thunk, repeated at higher volumes as Karsoth walked closer. Perfume wafted over Antar.
"From this height I could take off your head," Karsoth said in the same quiet voice.
"I believe you could, milord," Antar said, keeping his breathing as steady as he could. His legs trembled slightly, though whether from strain or panic, he didn't know.
"Lerenge spoke to me last night," Karsoth said.
Antar said nothing.
"I had your chambers searched," Karsoth said.
Antar remained resolutely quiet.
"Do you have something to tell me, servant of the Empire?"
For the first time, Antar looked up and directly into the eyes of Chamberlain Karsoth, highest representative of the celestial court, supreme authority in the Amarr Empire, and the conduit to the living God.
And saw something he recognized.
"Nothing you don't already know, milord," Antar said.
Karsoth smiled and pulled something out of a pocket on his golden robe. Antar had no doubt that he fully knew what crimes Antar had committed, for the man's dark network of spies and information was vast, but seeing the vial in the Chamberlain's hands was still a shock; not merely because it was the final embodiment of Antar's doom, but he was absolutely certain that he had destroyed it.
"Show me how faithful you are, Antar," the towering Chamberlain said to him, that same strange smile still on his face. "Talk."
Antar knew that whatever he said in here wouldn't matter. His fate would have been decided already, and his confession was no more than an amusement to the Chamberlain. Whether he begged, pleaded, threatened or cajoled, he would still end up in the cleansing pits. Nothing mattered now; but conversely, nothing was forbidden. Through the pounding noise of his heartbeat, there surfaced the realization that he was free to say what he wished, in this last confession.
So he began to talk.
In the silence he spoke of pain and punishment, of the fracture between body and spirit and of the ideal nobody could possibly fulfil unless they explored all facets of humanity. He told of the heavenly visions he'd encountered outside himself and the hellish aftermath of the fall back to reality. He confessed his constant, infinite, unyielding frustration with the Empire's insistence on denying itself the divine imperative to be animals.
At some point, through the fugue of quiet panic, he realized he had stood up and was looking the Chamberlain in the face. He kept talking.
And at last he stopped, falling abruptly silent like the last page turned. He felt clean and empty, like anything Karsoth could do would be an afterthought to a life already ended.
The giant man watched him for a long time, the smile on his face not completely faded. Then he leaned in, the supports on his legs creaking with effort, and said, "You are the man I've been looking for."
Antar stared back, with a dull and uncomprehending mind.
"Do you know what is going to happen to you, faithful one?" the Chamberlain asked.
"I will die," Antar said. "Eventually."
"That you will. But first you will follow me." Karsoth turned and walked to the wall behind his throne. For a moment he stood in front of a painting of someone Antar had never known.
There was no sign; no laser outline, no shimmer and nothing that indicated a change. Karsoth merely gave a short grunt of satisfaction, walked towards the wall and melded into it.
Not vanished, Antar's brain told Antar's incredulous eyes. The Chamberlain had not been abducted or turned invisible, but neither had he merely walked through a holograph. He had entered the wall as if it were a porous membrane, and the wall had melded itself to him, rippled and moved, and let him pass through.
Karsoth's face pushed back out, its surface area such a picture-perfect replica of the wall he'd entered that Antar could only make him out by the outlines of his jowls. "The passage is active for a few more seconds, acolyte," he said. "You come now or never."
Antar's feet took over from the rest of his stupid body and propelled him through.
On the other side were ... people. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. There was no external lighting, but torchlight glinted off naked skin. Some of them were ingesting things.
"Contrary to what you might believe, I am extremely faithful," Karsoth said, as if in passing. Antar nodded, unable to tear his gaze from the mass of humanity writhing in front of him. The air in the room was heavily perfumed, and the people were making low sounds. He felt light-headed.
"But I despise the god of the people we serve, for it is not the one true god. He would encourage indulgence and unfettered belief."
"He?" Antar said absent-mindedly, not having heard a word.
Karsoth misunderstood him. "Or She. God can be anything you wish."
"What happens to these people?" Antar said, still not entirely back in reality.
Karsoth gave him a stern look. "What do you think happens?"
"Before I saw this, I would have said the cleansing pits," Antar replied. Karsoth grunted.
They watched the display for a while. In a controlled voice that betrayed the slightest of tremors, Antar said, "Milord, I should ask, for I expect the question includes me as well. What does happen to these people?"
Karsoth put a hand on his shoulder and in a benevolent voice said, "They are forgiven, my son. And they go on."
"Where, milord?" Antar said. He thought for a moment. This was Karsoth. "And in one piece?" he added.
The Chamberlain laughed out loud, a raucous roar of noise that echoed through the room. "Yes, Antar, they'll be fine. They come here now and then to tell me news from the darker parts. Most are free to wander the court as they please, but they tend to prefer each other's company until they depart."
"Quite, milord."
Karsoth turned to him. "Understand, acolyte. There exist a people who think like this. I found them through much the same crisis of faith as you extemporized to me, a truth that defied the death you were staring in the eyes. I will send you to them now, as my emissary. You have served me well in the past, and you will serve even better in your new position."
"Milord, I... - well, what is there to say? I serve," Antar said, and bowed.
"So you will," Karsoth said. "There is an enemy out there that needs to be dealt with, for she stands against all that we are; not in innocence, which is easily enough countered, but a different kind of darkness altogether. You will never see her, for it would kill you, but you will hunt down the ones closest to her. And you will do it among your own kind at last."
"Yes, milord."
"So you will be off, but I need to know now - and believe me, I will see the lie on your face - do you want to go? Do you understand that you will leave behind everything you knew and disclaim every trace of the life you had?"
"Yes, your grace," Antar said. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Who are these people?"
Chamberlain Karsoth smiled. "They are called the Blood Raiders."
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The first time I saw the madmen, I was too slow on the button and they escaped into a narrow strait between the generators and a nearby warehouse. It took me a moment to realize what was happening - I was up top, photographing the last precious strains of a fading sunset through an industrial haze and smog, and had only noticed the activity below when I looked away from the lens - and before I could wonder what on earth they'd been doing climbing over the plant's security railings, I heard a low sound, a thrum in the earth, followed by a sudden and violent silence. I was shoved so hard backwards from the parapet and onto the rooftop that I hit my head on the brick floor, and lay there looking dazedly at the debris that showered over me. It's a wonder I didn't lose an eye, since half of the stuff was metal shards still too hot to touch. My hearing was gone, too, replaced with a constant, high-pitched whine. My photographer's instincts were intact, suicidal as they are, and as soon as I had my balance I rushed right up to the parapet again and started snapping pictures before I even knew what I was seeing.
Whatever role the generators had once fulfilled, they were now rubble. A foul-smelling smoke emanated from their broken husks and I could hear live electricity flying about. I wasn't too worried about the camera, which was insured by my employers, but felt the usual mild concern that some kind of radiation from the accident might affect its memory or the backups that I'd had implanted in my skin. I always worried about this if I was doing active fieldwork, though probably less due to any valid reason - the memory chips are sealed from outside interference, and if I ever have to worry about the skin chips I'll likely have much bigger problems to deal with - and more over transferal of emotion. When you put yourself in the line of fire, time on end, all that anxiety of self-preservation has to be put somewhere, lest it eat you up from inside or turn you stupid and make you act like you're immortal.
I had snapped a few shots of the smoking ruin when something on the warehouse wall caught my attention. I was too far away to see it with bare eyes, and the smoke still obscured most of it, but by zooming in and panning about I caught most of it.
If it had been a regular painted tag I'd have looked past, ignored it and focused back on the wreck. Most graffiti is applied either with paint composites or, for the hipsters, with detachable projectors that cast all sorts of visual tricks. This one, on the other hand, had been applied with ScArdite, a highly flammable substance normally used to treat metal surfaces. It was sold in large, sealed containers but if you knew what you were doing - and didn't mind risking your skin and eyebrows - you could siphon it into pressurized containers. When applied in steam form to metal it would leave scorch marks that couldn't be missed.
This one said, "Leave or die, Caldari".
I snapped pictures of it, nicely framed by the surrounding smoke and debris. They were thoughtless images, taken almost at random by someone who'd been there purely by accident.
A day later I was paid a high commission for the whole set, and two weeks after I was notified that the pictures would be set up in a prestigious current events exhibition. It was during this process I discovered the rest of what had happened: Those generators had fuelled security and auto-response systems over various areas in the city. Backup systems were in place, but they weren't sufficient to prevent a group of Gallenteans from sneaking about under the cover of encroaching darkness and assaulting both Caldari people and Caldari landmarks. The generators' destruction hadn't been a single and conclusive act of sabotage; it had been a call to arms.
***
The world was worried. The news was the same, but news analysis, which is where you hear what people are thinking, was turning more and more jingoistic and paranoid. I didn't know anything more than anyone else but I could see that something was starting to go very wrong.
I found myself thinking about those people. They'd wanted to send a message, and they had, but I wasn't even sure of what that message was, and neither were the pundits. The Caldari section of the populace was clamoring for the police to find, try and judge those responsible with the harshest penalties possible - this was Caldari Prime, after all, and we'd already suffered enough at the hands of the Federation - and demanded increased surveillance of Gallente youth. The Gallenteans, I have to say, took it all in stride, supporting our demands and agreeing with our politicians to whatever extent they could.
But it didn't make sense. A concentrated effort like the generator sabotage took planning and resources, if one ignored the stupid tags they'd left behind. Something like that was done with a clear and direct purpose in mind. You shut down power, you robbed the bank, and you escaped. The outcome of this, the assaults and property damage, wasn't a crime in the traditional sense; it was a generalized and violent political message, something you'd expect from a group of animals too stupid to know what else to do.
I couldn't stop thinking about it. I found myself visiting the landmarks they'd defaced and walking through the areas where they'd hurt all those people. I figured it might make for a good series of follow-up images but in truth I was doing it more for myself.
In each space I found something familiar, in that way I can never quite explain. When you take pictures you're dealing with three layers of reality: That which can be seen and is what it is, that which can also be seen but represents something else, and the dark limbo in between that's so abstract you can barely identify it at all. Fiction has the first two - storyline and metaphors - but usually lacks the third. It is the framework, the organization of everything so that it can tell its story; a meta-layer of conveyance.
And I saw it, the same thing, in every one of those locations. There was something about them that made them stand out. From a simple public park to the most imposing of Caldari monuments, it was there. This setting, light and lines, that gave an area its unmistakable flavor. This framework.
Whether the attackers had known about it, I had no idea. But I was a photographer and I'd wandered the streets of this city for a long time, long enough to know where else to find moods like this.
Probably I should have called the police, told them I had a suspicion of where they'd strike next. And probably they would have laughed, and thought I was some artist with an ego. Or they might have listened; I don't know.
I remembered a place in the city, one of many monuments to the fall of our planet. It had the same feel as the ones I'd seen, and it also had some nice vantage points where a person might hide out.
That same night I stocked up and took my gear to one of those vantage points, where I waited all night for something to happen. I was nervous and jittery, and would snap an image at the least little thing. In early morning I left my spot, tired and frustrated, but relieved, too; not merely for the sake of the monument but for my own.
I was between assignments and still felt too attached to the sabotage, so I slept during the day and returned to the same place the night after, with better equipment and a more patient attitude.
It served me well. That night they came.
***
The pictures caused an outrage. It was a proper series this time, from start to finish, that documented how a group of Gallente utterly reduced a Caldari monument to smoking ruin. Some of them - the ones who'd used acid and other things - wore gasmasks, but the group otherwise seemed entirely unconcerned with identification. At the end, they even pulled down their pants and urinated all over the remains of what they'd destroyed.
I had another exhibition during which someone asked me in fairly shocked tones why I hadn't done something. I kept a cool demeanor and asked what I should have done, alone, against a group of rampaging, violent criminals. My interrogator's spirit was dampened somewhat at this, so I put my arm on his shoulder and explained that sometimes all we could do was tell the others, to make sure society could see what was happening in its midst, and leave the rest up to the people in charge. He was mollified at this, though I don't think for a second that he truly thought any action would come of what was being displayed on the walls and in mid-air. It was a personal insult to him, what he'd seen in my pictures, and he was less concerned about society than his own fragile bubble inside of it, for if someone would do this to cherished and well-established landmarks of the city, someone might well take it into their head to go after its cherished and well-established patrons, too. Everything is personal, in the end.
This wasn't the first time I'd done war photography. Of course, in my head everything with violence in it could be called a war, the only difference being one of scale. Those people who maintained that a picture of mad dogs fighting in backyard matches was different from spaceship armadas launching torpedoes and ammo volleys at one another were really only deluding themselves. And as I looked at my own pictures, hovering there so gargantuan they blotted out the rest of my sight, it began to dawn on me that the raw power of this particular series - that unnamable framework - wasn't drawn forth so much by the violence that I'd seen a million times before, nor whatever political machinations might lie behind, but by my own emotional response to it. I could see it in the angles I had taken, the lines I had cut without even realizing it: the pictures were in perfect harmony not merely to the actions of their subjects, but to the situation itself. A situation that I had let myself become part of, both physically and emotionally. I had all but put myself in front of the lens.
It wouldn't be the last time, either. I had known where they would be and deep inside I felt a quiet reassurance that I also knew where else they would go. That budding realization, that this possibly hadn't been a fluke but instead a recurring relationship between me and these mad dogs, excited me beyond measure, and frightened me more than I can possibly explain.
***
I began hunting them, as one would stray animals. The framework was always there, waiting for me to find it and settle down to wait.
It amazed me how they didn't seem shy at all. They truly were like animals, acting out their nature unashamedly and with great vigor. Not that they had nothing to fear, for the authorities were after them in force, but they were good judges of any situation and responded to real threats rather than nervous imagination. A slaver hound will without hesitation tear apart a human being, taking its time to eat the flesh and muscle, and so long as you don't get between it and its meal it won't care at all that you're near.
The waits got shorter and I began to know their patterns so well that at times I could swear they were practically leaving me signs for where they'd strike next. Most of the images I took, I didn't even release myself. Aside from growing police interest in me, there's a limit to how much a client or exhibition hall is willing to pay a single photographer, and I'd long since set up various fake middlemen for those occasional times when I was especially productive.
Public attention in their crimes rose accordingly and hit such a fever pitch that I could afford to devote myself exclusively to the subject. I could probably have afforded a nice, long vacation as well, but as time passed it became less about the job and more about the hunt. There is a special flame that lights inside you when you spy the perfect framework, that dead limbo you want to capture forever, and I needed to keep it lit.
In fact, it had all been going so terribly well that what happened during my last session has robbed me of sleep and all peace of mind.
It was near sunset, my favorite time of day. I was high up in a disused building on the edge of town. It overlooked a trickle of a river, on the other end of which was a cemetery with a special plot for war veterans.
I'd been there on and off for almost sixty hours, but between my thermo mattress and some quite pleasant instant meals it was all right. My sleep was peaceful and rested, and motion scanners warned me of any possible appearances. It had been a few hours since I'd set up my gear and settled into that pleasant meditative state when one of the scanners pinged and I snapped to attention.
They came quietly, disabling security and pouring through the gates. I couldn't help but admire their movements; they looked so nonchalant and purposeful all at once, a hungry pack out on a hunt for easy prey. The group moved directly to the veterans' quarter and I felt the familiar trickle of excitement on my skin. With luck they would do their work before the light ran out.
At no point did I feel responsible for their actions; they were repulsive, and my excitement was always tempered with disgust at both them and myself. But that didn't stop me from shooting pictures.
And there must have been a glint from my lens, because even as one of them was straightening up, having defaced a Caldari grave in ways beyond comprehension and taken off his gasmask, he turned around with a bright blue smile, and he looked towards the abandoned building, and over the vast gulf of that dead limbo we suddenly both inhabited he looked directly into my eyes.
***
I felt my blood freeze. My mind turned in on itself, trying to comprehend what I'd just seen and whether it had been coincidence. I didn't even consciously see him any longer, though I kept shooting on instinct . They finished their task and the man never looked my way again, but long after they'd gone I lay there, trembling, rationalizing to myself the way someone does when they've long since crossed the line and now look back to see where it was.
For this framework, this dark limbo between reality and deeper meaning that I've been hunting all my life, is more all-encompassing than I ever imagined.
When I got home and inspected my pictures, I saw it.
Another thing I know about animals and respect them for is that they don't take a conscious decision to participate in whatever horrible acts they perform. It's instinct at most, but never calculated intent. The outcome looks much the same one way or another, but the reason matters. It matters to me.
My pictures are growing more and more popular, and I've sold them in the firm belief that I am merely a chronicler, nonexistent and outside the framework they convey. But I was so wrong. And yet I am going to keep taking them, because I must. I have become part of these events, and if I stop, then they will cease to exist, and so will I. The framework includes me, as it always did.
I have in my home a picture that I will never show to another human being. It shows a Gallentean, his face so nondescript I can barely describe it once I make myself look away. Beads of sweat are glistening on his countenance and the defaced gravestone by his feet bears the marks of the small drill in his hand. In his other hand he holds an empty canister of acid, droplets spilling from its edge and onto the grass below, and on the ground before him lies a used gasmask. He looks happy. He has just poured the jug's content all over the earth on which he stands, and the smoke that arose to envelop him has been blown to the winds. Soon the acid will seep even deeper into the ground, find its way to the bones buried in there, and dissolve them, leaving behind only a blackened, foul-smelling tar.
He is staring into the camera, one animal acknowledging another, and he is winking directly at me.
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The body rests. The thalamus, deep core and center of all things, resonates with itself at a rate so slow it's barely a murmur. All limbs are still and metabolism is kept to a minimum, with nothing floating through the bloodstream but a few hormones placidly drifting towards breakdown. The heart beats, the lungs inflate and deflate, and everything ticks over as it always has. In a dozen places the skin quivers slightly from nearly imperceptible electrical currents passed through it by the attached monitors.
A foreign substance hovers into the lungs, squeezing past the bronchioles alongside the oxygen and insinuating itself through the capillaries into the bloodstream. Moments later the central nervous system is dampened, and while there's possibly a flicker of activity in the thalamus, the state of rest remains unaltered.
The skin is broken for the first time. Several punctures are created right above the crook of each elbow, and in the skin a finger's breath below the heart. Needles slide in with mechanical accuracy, pierce veins, and begin to pump in chemicals. Several smaller punctures are made along the base of the spine, and a line of very narrow, very long needles slide in at a glacial pace, penetrating the subdural region. These needles pump in a single dose of something that immediately dulls the entire autonomic nervous system, leaving the brain unaware of the changes occurring to it and disinclined to start making a fuss.
The body begins to change. Since the chemicals are initially pumped away from the heart, the first parts affected are the limbs and the less complex internal organs; and, of course, the blood. Regular blood cells begin to die off, their walls eaten up by the intrusive substance while new, more robust ones are pumped out of bone marrow by the millions. These new cells, whose oxygen-carrying capability far exceeds that of the old and dying ones, grow to maturity in a matter of instants. The lungs then kick in, their alveoli adapting to letting in more oxygen than this body has ever been able to assimilate. The muscles swiftly respond, followed by various other organs, gorging themselves on this new red breath.
Once the chemical reaches the brain, change begins in earnest. Sinews strengthen and lengthen without overstretching. Bones are eaten away, their porous, paper-like remains left covered in a sticky residue that seeps into the remaining calcified matter, links and reacts, and eventually hardens into matrix-like structures far stronger than the original material. The heart is less altered, its ventricles merely expanding to deal with the onrush of new blood to a stronger body. It suffers some palpitations, but these even out quickly and the needles do not stop pumping in the chemicals.
***
The body is being put through extreme rigors. Muscles are tensed and flexed consistently, alternating between upper and lower sections of the skeleton, and reknotting themselves into stronger versions at a pace far beyond any past results. While the heart's rate of growth has remained less than might be expected, lung capacity has increased by leaps and bounds. All other organs remain in line, having picked up the pace much as a child who'd learned to walk and is now reveling in the joy of an endless run.
With this growth come new natural limits that also get tested with a vigor bordering on self-destruction. There is sleep deprivation, and the thalamus that once served its purpose with hushed consistency now regularly gets yanked in and out of REM without mercy, its waves spiking in dull panic. The skin routinely gets shocked with extremes of hot and cold, but the brain is learning to compensate for these differences, blood vessels constricting and expanding with high rapidity. Despite their increased size the new blood cells are more pliable than the older version and manage to get around beneath the outermost layer even when it has restricted and blocked off all outside interference. This is a powerful and resilient system now: locked down, coiled, and waiting.
There is a moment when the body relaxes, going as deep into theta as it consciously can. Some adrenaline still courses through the bloodstream, and various systems are on semi-prepared standby, but the brain orders all to stand down, fall back, and hold position. There is a wait.
A mild electric current passes through the body, its contact point located at the ankles. It causes the leg muscles to tense, jerk and finally convulse, pulling against each other. Every muscle is slowly worked over: The current brings it to its maximum twitching power, its glycogen stores are exhausted and its lactic acid is pumped back into the bloodstream. The lungs work overtime to the point where the visual cortex starts having issues decoding information and the labyrinth in the inner ear fails to maintain a proper sense of balance. Sensing this, the brain - still keeping the thalamus calm and producing delta waves - orders the diaphragm's contractions to ease up. It does so, reluctantly, and general equilibrium is slowly reestablished. The electric current moves up past the calves and the thighs, then separates, one contact sliding up the ventral nervous system and another one going up the lateral. They alternate their efforts over various muscles on either side, and things start to go wrong.
One back muscle, rarely trained, overstretches. In response the body's torso, which has been trained to much higher levels, cramps up and heaves. The effort combines with the current and begins to tear the back muscle apart, its striated cords snapping like the wires of a bridge in a tornado. The adrenal glands go nuts, pumping out adrenaline and other corticosteroids at the highest rate they can. The thalamus, by now used to being pounded into activity, jerks awareness back into action. All conscious control of the lungs is lost and air is expelled at high rates, the vocal cords vibrating so hard that their mucus lining begins to dry. Blood gets pumped into all extremities at twice the normal rate, which only accelerates the body's thrashings and the destruction of the back muscle. The heart, in fact, has an agonizing time keeping up, but its skipped beats are masked from detection by the flood of adrenaline.
The skin gets broken, a vein is pierced and sedatives begin to flood in. The pain stays constant but the system begins to relax involuntarily; cramping slows and finally ceases, brainwaves even out, and the battered adrenal glands return to normal. For a while there is utter stillness. Then a spot on the back, on the skin over the torn muscle, gets covered with something that begins to intrudes. The skin is not broken but permeated, as if water were passing through a wet cloth, and it grows very warm. The muscle also warms up even as the blood drains from it. Its tendrils reach out and hungrily eat a glut of nutrients carried to them by the surrounding cells. They start to intertwine, growing stronger and more pliable, morphing into cords of much greater tenacity.
The skin is uncovered. Very mild electrical pulses are applied to the torso, and the body slowly bends, stretching the back muscle. It stays unbroken, and the dulled brain, awake but unmoving, registers no signs of danger.
Eardrums, until now blessedly free of irritants, receive sounds that quickly dull the alpha waves and bring consciousness back in with speed. The brain becomes fully conscious of its state again, and the body's muscles gently flex and tense. The adrenal glands squirt a little in nervous anticipation, but nothing gets torn. The body is ready.
Later on it will receive a shock in motion that impacts hard enough to test even the matrices of the bones, but they withstand it.
Eventually the body experiences a lift, and a drop, and olfactory senses report that the air smells very different.
***
Rest comes harder than before and delta waves are barely even present; the body jerks itself into consciousness at the least little irritant, whether on eardrums, nose, or skin. The adrenal glands, in good practice, happily help out each time with generous supplies of corticosteroids, but eventually the brain reins them in.
The temperature shocks prove to have been helpful as the skin is now exposed to higher fluctuations over greater lengths of time than before. The heat doesn't cause damage but does interfere with gastric control, and there are several occasions where the adrenaline, the heat and high activity in the prefrontal cortex cause the stomach to vacate. Eventually the composition of ingested contents alters, lowering slightly in fat and starch and increasing in complex carbohydrates, fiber and various phytochemicals. There is also less alcohol ingestion, and eventually the stomach settles down and remains stable.
Over time the body settles into a groove. Everything goes at its pace, all glands function, and if there is the rarest of half-missed beats from the heart, the rest of the system more than makes up for it.
So when, at last, the eardrums are assaulted and the thalamus shocked out of deep delta waves, and the body is fairly thrown to hands and knees, the shock isn't quite enough to cause any immediate lockup. The eardrums keep taking in and filtering everything they can, while both visual cortex and motor control narrow their focus, accomplishing in linear order several tasks that are so practiced they have long since been ingrained in the subconscious. The body rises and begins to run, the hands slightly tensed to hold their deadly baggage, the skin on the fingers cooling from steely contact. Now the visual cortex takes over, the head craning back and forth while the legs piston and the lungs work, and every now and then the body will stop, crouch, process visuals and react through hand movements, either a wave or a slight pull of a finger.
It is during the exit from one such crouch that the eardrums process a loud whine, and immediately after the skin is massively broken, not merely torn but shredded off, veins pieced and muscles taken off in chunks. The abdominals contract with all the power they can muster, and air is forced out of the lungs, the vocal cords vibrating at high frequencies. All systems go independent; legs give out, hands cramp up and eardrums vibrate with a merciless rat-tat-tat; bladder goes into overdrive and so does adrenal gland, pumping like there's no tomorrow. Adrenaline courses through the system at unprecedented rates, while the blood cells, engorged with oxygen, deliver it to whatever extremities they can before flowing through the broken skin and out into the unknown; and in all these imbalances and all this stress the heart, having ticked away in duty and stress forever until this very moment, at last loses its grip: cramps up, goes on strike, stops. The body convulses, eyes rolling around in their sockets, and in those last shooting moments of pain and confusion there is just enough time for the brain to realize it has been cut off from the flow, and for the eardrums to process one last noise fast approaching, before the body is crushed, cut and burned by a force far greater than it has ever experienced, and even the matrices of its bones give out at last, their cracks the final sounds before the quiet, definite and final onfall of death.
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The corn was tall and the boy was not, which doubled his sense of exploration. His father had always forbidden him to wander through the fields, even if Jecal followed, and he was only here now because of the panic back home.
The boy's father was one of the most powerful slave-owners on the planet. Knowing of the boy's wanderlust and realizing that the exhortations not to explore the fields were little more than inducements, he had trained a slaver hound to follow the boy and protect him. Under most circumstances the slaves treated the boy politely, even when Jecal was nowhere to be seen, but in these troubled times it paid to make certain.
A little earlier in the day, the boy had secretly listened in on a meeting between his father and some of the field heads. It had been conducted in hushed tones, and the boy had heard mention only of an "unfortunate accident" and "strange movements on the horizon" that apparently demanded they redistributing the workers and doubling the guard at the palace. There had been disarray, and for once no one had been paying the boy any attention, which was all the opportunity he needed to slip out of the house unseen and head into the fields. Jecal had followed him but the boy sent him off several times, telling the slaver hound that he needed to be seen about the palace so they'd think the boy was there too. Three times Jecal had returned, only to be sent away. After the last time, he did not return, and the boy wandered on through a large field of corn while feeling the crisp giddiness of being slightly lost in forbidden places.
A sound caught his attention, so he changed direction and headed towards it. He pushed through a thick layer of corn only to tumble through and land on empty ground. He found himself on a small plain, an open circle in the middle of the field. In that field were three men, sitting hunched over on wooden stools. They were slaves, and the sun glistened on their black skin. Each man either held a large glass bottle containing clear liquid or had a corked one lying in front of him.
At the boy's arrival they all looked up in unison. One of the men hissed slowly and rolled his bottle between his hands. Another one picked up a bottle from the ground, uncorked it with deliberate slowness and took a long drink, not letting his gaze off the boy for a second. The third man, who was bigger than the others, put down his bottle, wove his fingers together and sat absolutely still. He looked at the boy for a while, then looked away and stared at the corn instead. It looked to the boy like he was praying, though the slaves supposedly didn't have any proper religion.
The large man kept looking at the corn, but the other two stared right at the boy. He stared back, having been taught not to be intimidated by slaves and not to say anything to them unless they deserved it. He thought he remembered seeing these people before, but wasn't sure, and he didn't know their names.
The big one suddenly got up and started walking to the boy, slowly and a little unsteadily. One of the two remaining men also got up, but the other grabbed him and pulled him back down.
The one who'd tried to stand up said, "You know what they'll do to us. The Vitoc." The undertones of panic in his breathless tone made the boy even uneasier.
"No," said the man who'd pulled him down. "Because we weren't here. Pick up your flask and go."
"It won't bring anyone back," the first one said.
The other one gave him a hard look and said, "That's not what this is about. We're going now. Don't look back, and don't say any more in front of the boy."
As they got up and left, the large man continued sauntering towards the boy. The boy wanted to flee but remembered his father saying that he shouldn't ever bow down to these people. So he stood firm while looking the man in the eyes.
The man walked up to him, and the boy smelled sweat and grime and something he imagined was alcohol. He kept looking at the man's eyes and was amazed to see that the man seemed to be quietly crying. The sight transfixed the boy, and as the man started to do something with his hands he paid it no attention. The man's face didn't change at all; the tears merely ran down, like little children left in the fields.
At last the boy looked down and saw that the man was slowly unwrapping something. It was an item packed in layers of a thin, shimmering material that the boy thought might be silk. The wrapping was pink, though it had a lot of dark stains, and was the same fabric as a thin, blue cord that had been knotted up and tied around the man's left wrist. As the boy looked on, the man unwrapped the package and took out a knife: a short, solid blade with a handle made of dried leaves wrapped around one end, the type of knife that the slaves often used at harvesting time to husk the corn. The blade was clean and looked very sharp.
On seeing the blade, the boy's breath caught in his throat and he began to feel very cold. Forgetting any rule he was ever taught, he looked up at the man and said in a low voice, "Mister, what are you going to do?"
Staring at the knife he'd unwrapped, the man frowned and leaned his head to one side, as if being asked to consider an unfavourable business proposition. "Hold still," he said. "Hold still and it won't hurt so much."
The boy couldn't move. Everything had become so real that it overwhelmed his senses. The sky was blue and cloudless. The corn smelled of earth and dinners. Things rustled, buzzed, creaked and squawked all around. The man was so impossibly tall he blotted out the sun, and he smelled like hard work. The boy took all this in without thinking about it because anything he could think right now would lead him somewhere he didn't want to be.
"Mister, what are you going to do to me?" the boy said again, not wanting to know but unable to think of anything else to say.
The man pinched his eyes shut and shook his head as if adamantly refusing a request. He had started crying again and wiped off the tears with the back of one hand while clutching the mottled silk. The other hand held the knife, pointed directly at the boy.
Once he'd wiped off the tears and softly cleared his throat, the man leaned over the boy, knife in hand. There was a louder rustle from the corn, followed by a rising growl, and Jecal burst out from the stalks, jumping onto the man and knocking him to the ground. The man swung the knife at the slaver a second too late, and the animal went to work on him with wide open jaws.
The boy stood frozen on the spot and watched what Jecal did.
When it was all over and the sounds of nature had resumed, the boy regarded what lay on the ground. He knelt beside it, picked up the silk cloth that lay on the trampled corn, and stuffed it in his pocket. He felt that something had been taken from him and that he should take something back, as revenge, or compensation, or simply as confirmation of a memory destined to lie deep.
He turned and began walking back home, slowly making his way through the corn with Jecal at his side. He kept touching Jecal as if to ensure himself that both he and the slaver were still there. Once he'd made it halfway to the palace he started to hear the voices of his father's people, who appeared to be anxiously shouting his name. There were noises from the sky and the earth, and gray clouds were amassing overhead. The silk cloth bulged in his pocket.
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Antel falls down in the mud again. It's been raining for days in the forge, and the long slog from his quarters to the iron works is tiring his feet and chilling him to the bone. He hauls himself up to his knees and rests for a while before standing up. He's so tired these days, but his sense of purpose is unflagging and it's not long before he's on his way to work again.
This life fills a void in him, as it does with so many of the other Caldari here. They are working for the State and serving their purpose in bringing it to greatness. It is his job to do his part. Most people have the same attitude, though some find it harder going than others.
He has never given much thought to how this void was created, or how it might otherwise be filled. It's there, and the harder he focuses on serving the State, the less he feels its presence. This is where he is, and this is where he'll always be. He can only change reality in some small measure, through diligent work, but he can change his perception of the entire world, and he chooses to serve.
He only wishes he wasn't always so tired.
The rain drives down. Antel overhears some people muttering about cold air and bad heating and the broken-down railway line that should've been fixed like so much else in this place, but he tunes it out.
A loudspeaker sounds as he approaches the factory grounds, blaring out his group code. He approaches a guard and asks what he should do, and the guard tells him that there was a mine crash in the night. They need people to clear out the rubble and anything else left inside. Antel has a lot of experience with this particular mine. He worked it for years, him and his friends.
With a sick feeling in his stomach, he heads over to the mine and meets up with those still living. They're given excavation tools and measuring equipment, and told to run checks on the infrastructure.
They proceed into the mine, which has been shored up. They find it in better shape than expected. Explorers are working in pairs, and Antel works alongside Foraani, a dependable man he's known for years. They know each other and the mine so well that they can move in silence, placing markers and inspecting fixtures with ease.
The mine is in decent shape, but the body they find is not. It has been crushed so thoroughly by a falling girder that there is little recognizable left of it except the head, which lies a little to the side. It seems almost untouched above the neck, something that strikes Antel as grotesque for a reason he cannot explain.
They peer closer and find that they recognize the face; it is an old friend from their shared time in the mining days, a man who never quite managed to get promoted out into the open air. Antel goes utterly cold. Foraani turns very white but says nothing, either, though he starts nodding to himself. He keeps doing it, even as they clear out the room and keep inspecting the mine, and when they emerge at last, he is still nodding almost imperceptively, and wringing his hands. They go their separate ways without speaking.
Antel is told to take the rest of the day off. He obeys, and takes the long walk back to his living quarters, where he returns to his bunker, files a work report, then removes his work clothes and puts them in the cleaning bag. He takes a shower to get rid of the smell, puts on fresh work clothes and goes out behind the bunker, staring hard at the grey, muddy ground and breathing deep. He closes his eyes, is seized by vertigo, and opens them again, still staring at the ground. It's like clay, and the pink flesh of his hands stands out in contrast. He feels outside of himself and, for the first time, feels like he belongs to something he is no longer a part of, like his friend's head, untouched but without a body, staring in blankness at the grey ceiling above.
***
Night. It takes him a long time to fall asleep. He feels that he should be mourning his friend, but for some reason he cannot. It takes him a considerable amount of time to come to the conclusion that he no longer views himself or anyone around him as an individual, but merely as a bolt in a ship, a cell in a body, a wheat stalk in a field.
It has been a long time since he last saw a field.
When there is acceptance of one's fate, and of one's place in the body politic, one finds peace. One does not mourn the loss of another cell, because it means the body is renewing itself, cleansing itself.
At last he sleeps, finding solace in dreams about the past.
***
At work there is little talk, though in sequestered corners people are discussing yesterday's tragedy and others like it. Antel hears one say this is the last thing they're going to take, and hears another tell him that he needs to wait a little, that they've got plans. When he tries to listen in, they move away. The ironworks belch black plumes of smoke into the sky, turning it a little more grey. It has stopped raining.
He feels completely isolated. He is a Caldari first and everything else second, but he cannot stop seeing his friend's face. He hasn't eaten a proper meal in so long that he's no longer sure such a thing even exists. Nobody buys Gallente luxuries anymore, and they're not available on the market anyway, not for people like him. There is nothing to do but walk through the day like a cell flowing through the body, doing what needs to be done, and fulfilling its purpose.
At one point Foraani comes up to him, still as grey as the metal sky. He explains to Antel that something is going to happen and asks if he wants to join. He adds that the others don't trust Antel, but he's known him for years and years and knows he will not let down the cause, and that after everything that's been done to them in all that time, he cannot imagine Antel can go on anymore like this.
Antel asks if their lost friend caused this, and Foraani says that he did; the company should have taken more security measures, and their entire attitude in this has opened his eyes to how thoroughly everyone is being abused. Antel asks Foraani whether he does not want to serve the State any longer, and Foraani says all he knows is how to serve, but a worthy cause needs worthy masters. He asks Antel whether he will join them, and Antel says that he needs time to think about it. Foraani looks at him for a long while, then nods once, says that he has less time to think than he realizes, and leaves.
***
The next night he lies awake again, feeling the panic rise in him like the tide, ebbing and swelling. There is going to be a revolution. There is going to be a break. He is a cell turning cancerous. There will be a revolution. He is a cell. He doesn't understand how a cell can consciously rebel against the body.
At last he gets up, calmly walks out and behind his bunker, barely catching a glimpse of the grey ground before his pink face opens its mouth and the pink contents of his stomach erupt from his pink body and splatter on the ground. He dry heaves a few times more, then spits off the strands of saliva and walks unsteadily back into his bunker, to sleep. He dreams about the future, and continually wakes up in cold sweats. He knows that something has gone wrong with him, but doesn't know what, or whether it was wrong all along.
***
The last time he wakes is an hour before reveille. He lies in his bunk, his thoughts flowing past as intangible and unstoppable as a rushing river. There is a void in him now and the thoughts pour into it, circling it like a funnel and hammering at all sides, hollowing it out even further. He had tried to fill it with his love for the Caldari and his servitude for the State, but now it seems bottomless, unyielding and hungry for something else. He is here - he will always be here - but he no longer knows with certainty if his place truly is here, though he has no idea where else it should be. Even if he transfers his allegiances to another cause, thereby betraying everything else he stood for, he doesn't know whether it will fill him up any better than before. He wonders whether a cell can switch bodies mid-stream without self-destructing in the process.
It occurs to him that most of the effort is on his side, has always been on his side, and that sometimes you can put in so much effort that you effectively become what you're trying to uphold, giving yourself to it as if the cell had become the body.
His stomach hurts. He rises and walks to the window. It's not grey outside, but orange; the sun is rising and the industrial works are bronze-colored with its light.
Anyone who tells on a coworker will be rewarded. Rebellions are crushed mercilessly. Those who attempt them are not true Caldari, Antel has taught himself, but traitors who want to ruin everything the State has built.
Antel cannot help but wonder how it would feel to be the body and not merely a cell; to be the field growing slowly in the orange sun.
He goes to work. At some point during the day, he meets up with Foraani and tells him he'll take part in the rebellion. He swears a simple oath, for everything is simple in this place.
***
Night again, and he sleeps soundly. He dreams about the present, about the sun on the fields below; about floating away happy as a cell carried by the torrents in a body of his own making. When he awakes, he feels light, for the first time in years, as if the wind could blow him away.
***
He wakes up a betrayer, and heads out to work. On his way to the forge he deviates from course and eventually finds himself outside a guard's cabin. He stands in front of it, his eyes closed, head tilted up towards the sky. He realizes that anything beyond himself is no longer part of him; it is the body's to think about, and not the cell's purpose to question. So he can go into the cabin, or he can move on, a betrayer either way.
And in that moment it hits him with a force so hard that he is brought to his knees: he has a choice in this, he is in a current of his own making, and whatever he does truly will affect only him, in his own cell, in this body that by extension is his, too. Nothing matters beyond that context. He is going to betray something, and in doing so he is going to rise beyond the cell, acknowledge his own endless efforts, and at last become the body proper.
He walks into the cabin and tells the guard all about the secret plan. The guard listens intently all the while, saying nothing. When Antel stops speaking, the guard tells him that there are more people who knew about this plan than Antel realizes. Then the guard pulls out a gun and points it at Antel.
He is in the field. He is here at last.
The guard says something, but Antel is too busy smiling to hear him. He has become the body.
The sun shines bright.
He is free.
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The sound echoed through the halls, a sonorous trumpet calling the children to Home. The lottery had begun again.
Two boys, Arbjan and Bryd, had been moving around some furniture for another arrival on the colony, while another nearby boy called Sispur had been dragging around a chair. They all stopped short at the noise. Arbjan and Bryd looked at one another, then in unison put down the table they'd been shifting around and started moving towards the doors. Sispur was a little slower on the uptake and took a couple of steps before realizing he was still holding on to the chair. They moved into the vast corridors and saw kids from other rooms doing the same, everyone moving in the same direction. Arbjan and Bryd first walked, then jogged, and finally broke into a sprint, with Sispur trailing behind and trying to keep up.
They entered the main square, which was already thronged with kids, most of Minmatar origin. The square was vast, connecting all other sections of the space colony like a hub. Its ceiling was domed and reddish-gold, and the light from outside often shone down to create glowing spears that slowly pointed their pendulum tips in accordance with the sun. By rights it should long since have been turned into an impromptu playground, but there was something off-putting about playing in an area so clearly meant for work and quick passage. As a result, the square was rarely used for anything except the lottery.
Sispur caught up with Arbjan and Bryd as they stood side by side in the middle of the crowd, looking expectantly at the video screens hanging overhead. The two boys had been friends for a while, which counted for a lot here. Sispur was the younger brother of sorts, having wormed his way into their little group. Younger kids who had no friends and couldn't take care of themselves did not have a good time in this place.
They only knew the space colony as ABF, which some smartasses had rendered forevermore as A'Beef, but it was the square that got called Home. For most of the children in this place - and aside from the guards there were only children in this place - it represented their one chance at getting out with any prospect of a life. The ones who won the lottery were chosen into service for one of the Amarr Heirs, where they were put to use in all manner of administrative duties from sweeping the floors to overseeing transport businesses. Some of the roles the winners were given wouldn't be very exciting, but it certainly beat the alternative.
Once a child of A'Beef hit a certain combination of physical maturity, mental maturity and biological age, they'd be shipped off to the colonies for a lifetime of slave labor if they hadn't won the lottery. Nobody knew where the cutoff point was. Some of the younger children found their friends shipped off years before they'd expected, others stayed on the facility longer than anyone would have thought possible, and one or two were even promoted to guards, but Sispur expected that once you found yourself really worrying about it, you'd probably made it to the danger area.
A familiar face lit up on the video screens. It was Uncle, a light-skinned, bearded old Minmatar who often introduced the vid shows they watched in the evenings. As usual he was dressed in a fairly traditional manner, the way Bryd imagined that older people generally did, and looked quite comfortable in his clothes. A tiny patch of bare skin between his beard and the collar of his suit showed the spike an old tattoo, one which station rumor held was the remnant of a Voluval test of his youth.
Uncle's baritone voice rang out from the speakers, announcing the latest draw. The children never knew how often the lotteries would be held or how many would be drawn, but it had been at least a couple of months since the last one. "Five have been chosen, one to serve each heir. Here are their names. First, drawn into service for the house of Kador, is Arbjan Haede..."
Arbjan, Bryd and Sispur erupted in cheers, hugging each other and jumping around with glee. Still listening intently, the other kids hissed and shushed them, their eyes focused on the screens with the unfiltered hope and despair that only a child can muster.
As the roll call went on, Sispur noticed some kids looking crestfallen. They were getting older and likely wouldn't have many draws left before being sent to the colonies. He hoped they'd get out of that, somehow, and that he would be picked before ever reaching that stage of fading, desperate time. He imagined it wasn't very pleasant.
Uncle said, "And finally, chosen by the house of Tash-Murkon, is Bryd Krooear. Those are the five lucky ones. There will be one more announcement in the coming days..."
His speech went on, but the trio of friends didn't hear it. They were staring at one another in amazement. Sispur felt his heart lift and his stomach tie itself into knots. He was so happy for his friends he couldn't even describe it. He was about to suggest they go somewhere and do something - leave the furniture and spend the rest of the day playing games - when some older kids approached them.
The older kids split into two groups, and they were all smiling. They congratulated both Arbjan and Bryd on their immense good luck, and each group focused on one of the boys, asking them how they felt, telling them how great it would be, and gently guiding them away from the crowd and from Sispur. He went to follow Bryd's group, but the kids in it gave him looks that said they would not be happy to find him tagging along. The last Sispur saw of his two friends was them being escorted away in different directions, surrounded by smiling faces and wiry bodies.
***
The chosen ones had a few days to prepare. Sispur, meanwhile, went about his usual tasks. He saw less and less of his friends, and when their paths did cross all he saw was two boys looking increasingly haggard and unhappy. They didn't want to talk about it much, though he wasn't sure whether they wanted to protect him from something or if they just didn't want him to remind them of the life they were about to leave behind. They had also begun neglecting their duties, a common enough occurrence among lottery winners. Since nobody paid any mind to them or anyone associated with them, Sispur was free to spend all his time wandering about the place alone.
The facility had many sections. There were the living quarters, where the children spent progressively more time as they got older; playroom locations that had both toys and larger recreational equipment; and a few areas reserved for schooling, although not everyone was required to attend. There were lots of large, empty rooms, often beset with climbable metal supports and with nooks and crannies that offered crawling and hideout opportunities. There were also some administrative areas, but the kids had little interest in those. One was the Baby section, where new arrivals were kept while they were acclimatizing to the facility. None of the children knew what criteria had been used to select the facility's inhabitants, nor did they remember anything of their past lives, although a few recalled the Baby section being peaceful and bright. Right next to it, nameless and uninteresting, was a section where some of the young girls were taken after being doomed to the colonies. It was whispered that marriage ceremonies took place there, the girls married off to Minmatar men and taken to new lives where they could serve Amarrian masters for five years without Vitoc before being set free. Every now and then a cargo ship would dock, stay for a day or two and then depart, which spawned rumors that the men from those ships had been boarding the facility to get married. Sometimes larger ships also came, although they only stayed a few hours.
Sispur wondered what his life would be like on the A'Beef from now on, and whether he'd ever be chosen. The lottery was fickle, and most children would be sent to the slave colonies. Tests of all sorts were periodically conducted for the children, and there were countless myths about how to perform in those to improve one's chances of being drawn, but nobody had yet discerned a pattern. In some of his darker moments Sispur had even thought that it really was a lottery, and that the tests were merely fakes. He didn't like to dwell on that too much..
And then it was the day before Arbjan and Bryd were slated to leave. Sispur had neither seen them for a long time nor been given any indication that they wanted to see him. He'd been out all day, staying away from people and ignoring everything he saw and heard.
As he wandered through Storage Section 4A - a place he once used to visit with his old friends - he heard a sound and followed it.
In a cubbyhole they often used for hide-and-seek, he found a badly beaten Bryd, bloodied and covered in scratches and bruises. Bryd screamed when he saw Sispur's face and scurried further back into the hole, but relaxed slightly when Sispur said, "Hey, it's me. It's just me. What happened to you?!"
Bryd blinked a couple of times as if realizing who he was looking at, then said, "Get out of there, quick."
"Look, it's okay. I'm alone. There's nobody coming." He leaned in close and caught a good look at Bryd's swollen face. "What did they do to you?"
Bryd sniffed a couple of times, wiped the snot and tears from his face with one sleeve, then used the other to wipe out the inside corners of his eyes. He blinked a few times, took a deep breath and looked back to Sispur. "They told us we were enemies now," he said. "They said we had to fight, that we were the generals in these armies. We'd been chosen, and we couldn't let our side down."
Sispur sat closer to him. Bryd didn't seem to mind or notice; he looked out into the distance. "All I've been hearing for the last few days is how great I am and how much Arbjan deserves to die; how the house of Kador is crumbling and worthless and only the house of Tash-Murkon can save what remains of the Empire. But they need good people, and for the others to get out of the way. So tonight we were going to find Arbjan and his army."
"To do what?" Sispur said quietly.
"To destroy them," Bryd whispered.
They sat there for a while, listening to the sounds of their own minds in motion. Finally Sispur said, "What happened then?"
"We'd heard where they were and were about to head over there, but I couldn't do it. I chickened out. I waited until everyone else was busy with their own thing, and then I took off quietly. I went through some of the back areas, but someone must've seen me and snitched, because Arbjan's group caught up, and they started to beat me."
"Was Arbjan there?"
"I don't know. I didn't see him. My own people came and attacked the ones who were beating me. There was this huge all-out fight, and in the middle of it I managed to escape. Some of Arbjan's people ran after me, but I shook them off and came here." Bryd gave him a miserable look. "I don't want any of this," he said, tears rising again in his eyes. "I want things to go back to the way they were."
Sispur nodded. Hearing Bryd refer to the thugs as his and Arbjan's "people" made him cringe. He tried to think of something to say, but couldn't. Eventually he settled for, "I'm sorry."
Bryd nodded, though Sispur felt he was acknowledging something else. "Now get out of here," he said.
"I'm not leaving you," Sispur replied.
Bryd gave him a look of something that had equal measure of love and hatred. "If you don't go, I'm dead for sure."
"I am not going to tell on you, Bryd."
His friend leaned back, pinched his eyes shut and bobbed his head up and down, as if trying to contain himself. Sispur didn't know whether he was trying not to laugh or cry, and looked away, towards the empty hall.
At last Bryd spoke again, but the words were unintelligible. He cleared his throat harshly and said, "You really don't know? About you."
"Know what? What are you talking about?"
This time Bryd laughed, and for an instant Sispur saw his old friend shine through, the one who'd make fun of him but it was okay, because it was just Bryd. "You were chosen," the beaten boy said.
Sispur's breath caught in his throat. "What for?"
"It's all over the A'Beef. Uncle announced it in Home today. There are guards looking for you, and you're supposed to be leaving. I don't know if Arbjan's guys will let that happen if they find you here with me, though."
"What are you saying, Bryd?"
"You've been chosen to serve the Chamberlain himself. Nobody can hurt you. You're untouchable now," Bryd said, and started to cry. "You won. You won. You won."
Sispur got up in a daze. He left the hidey-hole, leaving Bryd behind, and slowly walked out of the hall, going through the A'Beef for the last time. Any children who saw him kept their distance. Eventually the guards came, and took him away.
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"Have a seat, and explain to me why you're still aboard this ship," the Captain said.
Lieutenant Pars Kheeilan walked into the Captain's office and took a seat. The office was large, with several chairs sequestered near the walls. In front of Pars was the Captain's large desk, covered with datareaders, and beyond it his personal chair, its seat far more worn than its arms. To one side there was a global recon table that, when activated, would project a 3D hologram. The window behind the desk and the Captain's chair was capable of displaying any manner of vids, both army and private, but now showed nothing but the blackness of space. To another side was an unobtrusive door connected to the Captain's own living quarters. The Captain himself was standing behind his desk, with an immobile expression, and his arms clasped behind his back.
"I wonder that myself sometimes, sir," Pars said. When he saw the Captain's expression, he rubbed his eyes and added, "Sorry, sir. It's been a long day." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small datakey, leaned foward and put it on the Captain's desk. "These are the people named in the riot. We're treating everyone as a suspect, but there are only a handful who got so involved that they had to be thrown into the brig. The rest were returned to their duties."
"Any more trouble?"
"No, sir. People are keeping quiet and waiting to see what we do."
"Well then, Lieutenant Kheeilan," the Captain said and leaned forward, resting his outstretched arms on the desk for support, his knuckles on its surface, "Seeing as how this happened in cafeteria E-1, which was occupied by your Delta unit, staffed with Delta men, and damaged with Delta weapons, what is the leader responsible for Delta going to do about it? And why were there weapons out in the cafeteria at all?"
"To be fair, sir, the weapons damage was one discharge of an emergency weapon located on-site, fired by a man who'd never handled a gun but nevertheless got the clever idea to break it open and fire a warning shot. He wanted to calm the crowd, I'm told, but managed to fire the gun directly through three adjoining walls. The bullet stopped at the inner shield."
"What is this man's present status?"
"Sick bay. He barely missed the head of Ensign Mjern in the head, and Mjern proceeded to knock him out flat on the spot."
When the Captain didn't comment, the Lieutenant continued, "Sir, it's been a hotbed recently. When it's like that, it only takes one person to light the fuse. I'm not one to single out my men for blame, but I've spoken to several people and in this case it's obvious who's the main party responsible for this."
The Captain stared at him for a while. Then he sighed, lifted his arms from the table and sat down heavily into his chair. His knuckles had gone white from the pressure.
"It's that bloody nitwit Crayan again, isn't it?"
"Yes, sir."
"Have you spoken to him?"
"I have, sir. One of the other Deltas made the usual lunchtime comment about sexual relations with someone else's blood relative, and Crayan took it personally, electing to stab the offending party with his fork and beat him severely over the head with his tray. In his words, his hometown hero never took no shit from no Matar and neither will he. He apparently feels this should count to his benefit."
The Captain grimaced. "I've been reading up on your man, as it happens. Found out some interesting things. This isn't the first time he causes trouble, Lieutenant."
"No sir, it isn't."
"He's a race-barker. Beat up some Minmatar Ensign, and when the man dared file complaints, Crayan drugged and stripped him, took a handheld laser to his tattoos, and defaced them in such humiliating ways that the Ensign dropped charges, lest he be seen and photographed like that. Crayan got a month in the brig for that. Didn't teach him much."
"No, sir. Nor did his other stay in the brig after he torched another Ensign's pet fedo and left it on the Ensign's food tray. He spent much of his solitary time singing songs he learned back home, and talking loudly about this hometown hero of his. Apparently they're distant relations."
"So what do you recommend?" the Captain said.
"Summary dismissal, sir."
The Captain leaned back in his chair and knitted his hands behind his head. "As I recall from the last incident involving your man, Crayan is on a five-year contract, low interest, three years locked in service. Do you propose to break this contract? Because if you do, I know quite a few Lieutenants, Lieutenant-Captains and Captains who will be after your blood."
"But still-"
"These contracts were created for a reason, Lieutenant. How do you think we keep people in the Navy these days?"
"God only knows, sir," Pars said, and winced in regret the second the words were out.
There was silence in the room. Eventually Pars added, "How bad are things, sir? Truthfully?"
The Captain said nothing.
"Sir, we've served together for a while. We're in this to stay. I'm seeing more riots and less signups, and the people we do get aren't anywhere near the old standard. Something has gone very wrong. What happened?"
The Captain turned in his chair, rotating it so that he could look sideways and see out the window. Their vessel was stationary, but anyone looking out into empty space for too long would likely start to feel that the blinking stars were slowly moving by. "It's a nice view," the Captain said. "I've always liked it. Usually it makes people sick after a while, which is good when I'm tired of strategic planning and want them out of my office."
He turned back to Pars. "You seem to be doing fine," he said with a wry smile.
The Lieutenant returned the smile and said, "If it did that to me, sir, I shouldn't even be here."
The Captain nodded. He frowned, then seemed to make up his mind about something; got up, and walked slowly over to the recon table. He activated it and a flat green panel lit up in the air in front of him. Its surface was covered with various tactical display options. The Captain selected one, and the display changed to a space map, highlighting various nearby constellations. "Since our area is one of the Navy's fleet accumulation points, it's a decent representation of all other such locations," he said. "These dots here are the outlying points, frontlines in case of skirmish."
Several points on the display lit up, and the rest darkened. The Lieutenant stood up and walked over to take a look.
"Do you know who's manning these?" the Captain said. "The points of utmost importance in case we get called on for anything more than capsuleer patrol? The Matari." A disc expanded around each point, its area pie-sectioned like a flower blooming with petals purple and green. Each circle was composed of far more purple sections than green. "Distribution of troops according to race. Matari outnumber us and everyone else."
"Those guys have always sought out the army," Pars said.
"And now we're putting them in the line of fire. Doesn't it strike you as odd that the people supposed to die for this empire are the ones who probably came here to find a better life?"
"It's the way of the Navy, sir," Pars said and shrugged.
"It was, Lieutenant," the Captain said. "Except now our own people beg off serving there, in the apparent belief that the Navy should offer them a nice, safe working environment, preferably with a corner office. Look at this." The entire map was lit up and each Captain point sprouted a disc, this time sectioned into greys and greens. There were vastly more grey sections everywhere.
"Don't tell me those are non-Gallente, sir," Pars said.
"Those are non-humans, Lieutenant, though likely a step over some in Delta squad. They're drones. Those are our defense capabilities, measured in drone and human output. I hardly need tell you that we're allocating record funds to drone tech manufacturers, money that is not being equalled in our recruiting departments." The Captain sighed. "Long and the short of it, Lieutenant, we're not getting the people we need, nor the type of people we need. Everyone has it too good planetside. They'd much rather do a terraforming project or two and settle down in a bungalow somewhere than risk their necks in a fleet that's going nowhere fast. All we're getting these days is the hotheads and the idiots, and we're having trouble even holding on to them. Even the Minmatars - who're fine workers and decent people, don't get me wrong - even they don't join up anymore. Some of the tougher ones still show up in the army, and I expect we'll always have a steady trickle of Brutors happy to fight anyone we put in their way, but by and large they treat this as a land of opportunity, with a stable government, and they work hard and make their own way, leaving us stuck with what remains. I just hope we can stay out of trouble, Lieutenant."
Pars blinked a couple of times, then stammered in surprise, "We're the Navy, sir."
"Exactly," the Captain said, and sat back down at his desk. He knitted his hands behind his head, put his feet up on the desk, leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Pars sat back in his own chair, waiting patiently.
Eventually the Captain seemed to reach a decision. "I'm not going to put you through hoops, Lieutenant," he said, "because frankly, there's no point. You're no more responsible for this mess than I am. Delta is what we have to work with, they and everyone like them, and regular punishment won't cut it. If all we do is push people, we'll eventually push them out. We need to get back to our roots as a proper fighting force, which includes the break-and-rebuild tactics. And Crayan is a perfect example of that. If we can remould him, the rest are going to follow. We only need to find the right entry point, something that'll unsettle him enough that he'll be easy to shake to pieces after that."
"What do you suggest, sir?"
"The problem with Crayan is that he's got an ego complex. Breaking and rebuilding him won't get rid of that; it'll only push those things so deep we'll never reach them. And this hometown hero thing of his is another anchor. He clearly believes that he's going to achieve the same fame, and it keeps him going. So we'll take that away from him." The Captain smiled again, but without warmth. "Ops contacted me recently, as a matter of fact. They're starting in on one of their outreach programs for young recruits, where they pick someone and make him our spokesperson in ads shown all around the empire. Crayan wants to be famous; we'll make him famous."
Pars raised an eyebrow. "There's a catch to this, sir, and I'm waiting to hear it."
"Of course there is," the Captain said and gave him a big, bright smile. "Ops have given up on the usual macho stuff and are going for those weird ads again, the surreal ones some marketer cooked up to grab the eyes of our shellshocked, vidwatching youth. So this isn't some guy going," the Captain's voice shifted down an octave, "'It's great to be in the navy. Be a man in the navy.' It's something else entirely. It was suggested a while back and was quickly shelved due to being too stupid, but Ops is feeling the pressure same as me, and they're digging up any old idea and dusting it off. Personally I don't think it'll help a bit, but it wouldn't do my career or yours any harm to show a little spirit for once."
"What'll Crayan have to do?"
The Captain's smile widened even further. He spoke slowly, as if enjoying the passage of words. "He'll have to dress up as a Fedo and talk nonsensically about synthetics for ten seconds, after which we'll flash our logo and something about a different life. He'll be in full costume, but even so, his voice will be unaltered, recorded separately. I imagine that eventually someone in his hometown will recognize it."
"That's ... insane."
"That's what we need to show our civilians, apparently. Shock them a bit, so they'll pay attention to the final image."
"He'll never go for that," the Lieutenant said. "He'll be shot into space rather than do this."
"Funny you should say that," the Captain replied. He stood up and walked to the door, and the Lieutenant followed. "As I said, it's all about breaking points. You find one, and you push it hard, knowing that something will give way. Once he's done with this ad, he'll crawl over broken glass to do anything else instead, and that's when we'll start him in on proper retraining. To make him do the ad itself, all you need is to create enough uncertainty that you can manipulate him into it. Cut him off from his anchor, his idol."
"His hometown hero," the Lieutenant said.
"Precisely," the Captain replied, ushering Pars out the door. "I looked through Crayan's records, same as you, and same as others, I'll venture. But I looked one further. And this guy he so worships, the one who drew him into service, the one in whom Crayan's belief has seen him through the roughest of times?"
"Yes?"
Before the door closed, the Captain said, "He never made it to deployment. Old tale spread to his people back home to preserve the poor boy's integrity. He barely crawled through basic training, got drunk as a dog on the way to base, landed himself in all sorts of trouble and ended up jettisoning himself into space by accident. Might want to mention that to Crayan, right before you give him the one big chance for his own grab at fame."
The door closed on an astonished Pars.
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It was chilly on the roof, even though the house was only a few stories high. There was little in the way of shelter up there: a few receivers and antennas, and the metal railings of a fire escape attached to one wall. Most of the buildings in this part of the station were like this; spare, low and nondescript. If more people moved into the area, new stories would be slotted onto this one like a combination toy. It wasn't quite the poor section, but it had even less personality.
A young woman lay on the roof, on a small blanket, looking up at the station dome. It was high enough that it couldn't easily be glimpsed in the dusk, and most of the lighting came from massive advertising screen in the distance, the reflection of their flickering images rendering the sky full of multihued moving images, like rainbows taking on a strange life.
The woman sighed.
There was a noise from the fire escape. The steps were metal through and through, and even in the night-time hiss of busy life, the clanging reverberations of feet stomping determinedly down could easily be heard.
The woman sat up, frowned and looked to the escape.
After a while, two wrinkly hands could be seen gripping the top railings, followed by the ascendancy of a head of grey hair. An old woman came up the stairs, one step at a time, and crossed onto the roof. She was wrinkled and thin, but her footsteps didn't waver, and she walked assuredly over to the young woman with a set, unsmiling expression.
"... Gran?" the young woman said in amazement.
"I'll thank you not to hang out on any roofs in the future, young miss," Gran said. "I went to the university grounds, and even tracked down that place where you're always talking rebellion with those tattooed nincompoops, and nobody knew where you were."
The old woman brushed herself off and straightened her dress. "I'd have lost you outright if one of them hadn't mentioned your little hangout here, though I won't ask why he knows about a thing like that, or what you're doing bringing boys up here with you." She regarded the young woman with a mix of annoyance and barely concealed amusement. "Your mouth's hanging open, dear. Do close it before ships start to dock."
The young woman's mouth snapped shut with a click. "Gran, you shouldn't be up here," she said. "If you fall, or if something happens-"
"It'll hopefully teach you to talk to your Gran first before rushing off to nowhere parts, though it's better than that hideout of idiotic chatterboxes you usually hang out with." Gran said. "Your mother was getting worried about you, Beliah."
"Don't mention her, please," Beliah said in a firm tone. "I couldn't go to the RU because I was too furious to talk to anyone, and it's because of her. And I'll thank you not to speak about the political and sociology students like that. They've got a lot of interesting things to say about rights and rebellion."
Gran walked up to her and slowly sat down on the blanket, grunting and sighing. Beliah scooted over to give her room, and decided to press on. "Do you know what kind of a state we're in, Gran? Everyone's talking about revolution. Karin Midular's losing support, while blind Maleatu Shakor is gaining it, and there's no love lost between those two. It's Shakor that my friends look up to, the one who isn't always giving way with the Amarrians. I admire Midular, I really do, but we're not a people that are easily led, and I think - my friends at RU think - that he's our only real hope out of this mess."
Gran had been sitting quietly, catching her breath- which Beliah found a little overdone, seeing as how the old woman had just scaled three stories without apparent effort, but didn't comment on - and now said, "We'll leave be for now those wise young students of yours. You know, dear, it's because of your mother that we're even on this station. She spent all her savings to get here."
"And we're practically in the Rust quarters," Beliah said, feeling petty for saying it.
"Then it's your job to work your way out of it, and not waste all that time babbling about revolutions."
Beliah got up, brushed off her legs and started walking around, though she didn't stray too far from the blanket. "Look, I can't stand it any longer. You know about the Amarrian?"
"I do, dear."
"She's dating an Amarrian!"
"Yes, she is."
"Look, all I'm saying, it's just not right. Not with the battle that's going on."
"Battles of all sorts always have two sides, Beliah."
Beliah stopped, and looked at Gran. "Yeah, they do. Right and wrong," she said.
Gran got a stern look. "I'm not your real grandma, of course, so I don't have any say in over what you do or don't do."
Beliah relented a bit at this, protesting, "No, I'm sorry. Look, you're as close to one as I ever knew."
"No, no," Gran said, "Your real grandma lived down on the planet below. And she lived through the rebellions there. She could've told you stories."
"I don't doubt it," Beliah said, relieved to change the subject, even if it had to be through a bit of passive aggressiveness. "I know she had some rough times. And I still think a shame that none of the rebellions succeeded."
Gran's look changed from caution to something Beliah couldn't quite define. The old woman said, "I don't know about that, dear."
Beliah stared at her. "You'd rather we remained under the heel forever?"
Gran slowly got to her feet. Beliah moved to help her, but the old woman waved her away. She brushed off her skirt, walked over to the edge of the roof and leaned on the parapet, looking over. After a moment, Beliah came and joined her. They stared at the sparse traffic for a while: people below, going about their lives, either in motion or standstill. Eventually, and keeping her eyes on the distance, Gran said in a quiet voice, "You really think the Amarrians are that bad? That you'd not even let your own mother find happiness in whatever way she can?"
"Don't put it like that," Beliah said.
"Then how do you want to put it?" Gran asked.
"I just wish the rebellion had succeeded," Beliah said. "Do it once, get it over with, and never think about revolution again."
Gran sighed. Beliah made to speak, but Gran interrupted. "No, don't say it. Whatever it is. Let me tell you something." She turned to face Beliah. "The kind of people who start a revolution aren't always the kind of people who can finish it."
"They tried," Beliah insisted. "They did the right thing."
"Did they now?" Gran said. "Is that what you're taught in that place? What were those right things?"
"Well, they amassed an army. Liberated supplies of Vitoc. Fought their way through various areas and held control points for a while."
"Then what?" Gran asked.
Beliah frowned. "Then they were betrayed, like people always are by the ones closest to them," she said with a hint of bitterness, "And it all fell apart."
Gran said, "Let me ask you something, little bird. Is this all you've learned in those palaces of wisdom you've gone to for most of your life? And don't tell me it's because the media is Amarr-controlled, because you're not too old for me to spank you."
The young woman smiled. "They don't teach much about it," she said. "Not in detail. We're given a timeline of all the uprisings that took place, and told a few generalities about the final rebellion, and that's it. It's hard to find data, but I've never wondered much about that. It's history, and I need to know it, but I need to know a lot of things in the present."
Gran sighed. "This is true. Sometimes, mind, I wish they'd teach you the rest, even if it's not for children."
"What do you mean?" Beliah asked, and added, "I'm not a child anymore, you know."
"You've never heard about the daughters of the revolution, have you?" Gran asked, watching her sharply.
Beliah shook her head.
"You're sure? Not from anyone?" Gran said.
"I would remember."
"Yes," Gran said, reaching out and stroking a wisp of dark hair back behind Beliah's ear. "I believe you would, little bird." She sighed again, and turned back towards the traffic below. Someone was arguing with someone else, their hands moving about a lot. The words didn't reach up to the roof, but the noise did.
"The reason the army failed wasn't because of a traitor," Gran said. "As I said, these things have a way of falling apart, particularly if they're being held together by the same people who started them. And if you've never wondered why this revolution, which was incredibly successful for some dirty meaning of success, has been glossed over, then it's for the best. It's something everyone would rather forget."
"Were you there?" Beliah asked. "It happened in your lifetime. I've never asked you this, for some reason."
"I wouldn't have answered, likely than not," Gran said. "If you weren't getting so muddleheaded about your mother doing what she wants with her life then you would never be told this. So listen, and remember, and keep it to yourself." She closed her eyes for a while, then opened them again and looked skywards, towards the reflected lights of the ad screens. "Slave army, yes. Managed to get a hold of Vitoc. They knew it wouldn't last; even if they got control, the Vitoc would eventually run out. So they were riding high on their luck, but they were never going to rule the planet. They were good with their words, and good at getting people excited, and they only wanted to lash out, like some young people do without heeding the consequences when they don't know anything else." Gran gave Beliah another look, but the young woman kept quiet.
"And they did so in terrible, terrible fashion," Gran continued. "They went through the land, destroying everything they saw. Anyone who tried to stop them was automatically a sympathizer with the Amarrians, and was dealt with as such. If it was men or boys, they'd be shot on the spot. If it was women, or even girls, well, there's some things we don't talk about.
"And at some point, one of the rebel leaders got the bright idea that they needed to change tactics. They called it polluting the enemy, I hear, but what I call it is stupid men with guns deciding they don't need to play by any rules anymore, and giving their souls to the devil. So instead of leaving the sympathizers on the side of the road to die, they started to round them up, and they built camps. Men were made to work, and women were made to do a different kind of work."
Gran took a deep breath. "Eventually something happened, as it always does, and the rebels were trapped, caught and shot. It was a better ending than they deserved, the poor fools, and their bodies were quietly buried in unmarked graves. But they'd left their marks. There were a lot of babies born later on, and most of those babies were shifted away to foster care of some sort, to them's as would have them. Your mom was lucky, because she was taken in by a family and not an institution, ad by the time she was old enough to work, slavery had fallen out of favor in that part of the world. But she suffered for it. Oh lord, she did. A daughter of the revolution," Gran said, spitting out that last word.
"So here's your lesson, little student" she said to Beliah, who had tears in her eyes. "I didn't come along until later, to sit for the family. They were good Matari who did their best, and money was never scarce, but your mother's scars run deep, and in the end she had to get away from them before she could turn them into the monsters she sometimes sees in our people. So she ran." Gran stroked back her own hair, which the strengthening breeze was playing with. "I'm not sure she's ever stopped running. I kept working for the family, but much later, after I'd long since left, your mom tracked me down and invited me up here. I expect it's to make up for leaving her adopted parents, who'd already died in some calamity or other. She's a hard worker, your mother, but no master at personal relations."
Beliah nodded silently, and Gran went on. "Your father, for example. Not a bad man, but he did lose his temper a few times, and that's all she needed. She will not abide that, and in truth, I'm not sure she ever would be with one of our own people unless he was unstable enough for her to eventually leave him. She's got a hard core, looking for something to aim at. Like some people I know," Gran said, with a little smile.
Beliah nodded her head, giving a trembling little smile.
They looked at the traffic for a while. The argument below had stopped, and each person gone quietly to wherever they were headed.
Eventually Beliah went back to her blanket, folded it, and started walking towards the fire escape.
Gran said, "If you think there's right and wrong, little bird, it's before you now. Are you going to your mother's, or to the university?"
Beliah stopped, but didn't turn around. "Neither. I'm going to get something to eat." She stood stock still, looking at the massive screens in the distance, and added, "And then I might buy some flowers." She turned and gave Gran another brittle smile, then walked away.
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This is the sixteenth and final instalment in the Black Mountain series. The previous instalment is "Dismantling". If you want to read it from the start, begin with the introductory pieces "The Greatest Joke" and "Post Mortem", then head on over to the first instalment proper, "On This Earth".
Jonak and I were bringing our vessel back to home when we got the call. I had recently switched teams within the Sisters of EVE, joining the Sanctuary at long last, and the missions could be draining. I'd been hoping for this one to be a nice, quiet trip back to base for reassignment briefing and a bit of a rest.
We were in Ammatar space, and there were no other Sister ships in the immediate vicinity. The only reason we were even coming through here was that our ship needed a quick overhaul from the station mechanics. It was secure space, which the Navies patrolled, and help calls were usually routed to them.
We did have other teams on standby, but the emergency call we received was from a ship, not an orbiting object. This was unusual, since ships were far more volatile and thus didn't usually have the time to call for help from anyone but their own supporting forces. Still, the call indicated there weren't many people onboard, and that it was a serious emergency, so we changed course and sped to their position.
As we flew there, more strange information came in. The ship was apparently an Ammatar caravan, which was natural enough, and was located in a system that bordered the Angel space nearby, but they were broadcasting on our emergency band. This meant they had foregone their own corporate channel to request backup, and while the emergency band would bring in the Sisters, it might also attract scavengers.
We made it to the ship and found it a smoking husk, its engines barely firing and its hull cracked to pieces. It didn't seem to have ruptured, though, which meant there might be people alive inside. The ship was a caravan and wouldn't have had any offensive gear to speak of, but I noticed several wrecks in the vicinity and suspected those were the remains of whatever force had been here to protect it. I couldn't see whether the wrecks were Navy or pirate ships, but it didn't matter. Nothing else moved, and nobody made to attack us. It didn't feel like a trap, and for veterans like us, that feeling is really all we need to decide whether to engage.
Deeper scans verified the caravan's structural integrity and life-support systems, and so we had official permission to board. We suited up, let our ship clamp on to the caravan, set up the tube connectors, and boarded, into smoke, fire, blood and screaming.
***
#1: What are we going to do about this case?
#2: Well, there've been reports of the station being destroyed, but nobody's really that interested in something that's been a derelict for ages, so there won't be any press. When our cleanup team got there for official emergency assistance, the damn Society had already cleaned the scene and gone. There was nothing left to salvage.
#1: Not even a bit of the machine?
#2: Especially not the machine. It's gone, and gone for good if I'm any judge.
#1: So there's nothing left? Whole mission was a wash?
#2: No, not at all. We found out some interesting things, and there's still someone out there who we might extract valid intel from if we can find her.
#1: Who?
#2: Some Angel woman.
***
We moved through the ship, judging who was salvageable and who wasn't. Cherrypicking is a cold concept at best, but when you're surrounded by the rapidly dying, you don't have time to give succour. Since there was a decent amount of ground to cover in a very limited time, we covered the main areas first - ops levels and living quarters - and checked the vitals on whoever was still in one piece. There were lots of people in shock, but they'd be alright. The hardest ones to leave were those who'd had some kind of surface damage; you never quite know if they'll be in so much pain that they'll cling to you and demand assistance, and sometimes you have to be nasty and give them a little tap on the injured area, just to make them let go.
We were checking on someone whose ribs weren't all intact, when he started asking about angels. It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the pirates, and that there was probably an Angel on the ship. I gave Jonak a look, then gave our patient a quick booster shot to clear his head, and asked him who he meant.
"There was an Angel representative on the ship," he said. "He rushed to the exits when we were attacked."
"Was he armed?" I asked.
"No, just had some strange device with him, but it didn't look like a weapon."
"What was it?"
"This curved metal thing, with a red ball in the middle."
I looked at Jonak again and said, "Doesn't sound like anything I know."
He gave me a strange look and said, "No, me neither."
After we'd strapped in those cases who were near-critical and prepped them for removal, Jonak told me he was going to look for the Angel, and that I should take the casualties to our own ship and stay there. It was a perfectly sensible idea: Someone had to tend to the wounded and, if something went wrong, be ready to make a getaway. Everyone else on the caravan was in good enough shape to live but not good enough to defend themselves if some pirate started wreaking havoc. And besides, Jonak had a lot more combat training.
I kept the criticals conscious as I shuttled them through the tube back to our ship. It would make the ride more unpleasant for them, but until I could get them into our sick bays and do a more thorough scan, I couldn't risk having them slip into a coma. I kept up a gently rolling dialogue all the way, asking them about their trip here, and keeping their minds off things as much as I could.
They told me things I already knew, that they were an Ammatar caravan that had gone to the border of Angel space for some strange business. I nodded and hummed and encouraged them to keep talking, trying to judge their state by the strength in their voices. It was a secret mission, so the Ammatar corp they belonged to had washed its hands of them beforehand. If they landed in trouble, they'd be on their own. Their Ammatar employers had heard that the Angels had been making deep-space incursions into hereto unexamined pockets of space and digging up various items, including some that might prove of marked value in the future. The Ammatars didn't particularly know what these items were, and had little interest in any particular ones, but they wanted to strengthen their illicit trading ties to the Angels just in case they could reap some profits or get first dibs on lucrative offers. That was why, I realized, they hadn't sent out an emergency call to their company, but only to the Sisters.
Everything had gone smoothly, they said, until the capsuleer showed up. He'd likely been on a pirate hunt and had destroyed every Angel ship around them, then gone for the caravan. Since they'd been without protection, no Navy forces had shown up, and the capsuleer only stopped firing instants before the caravan was about to explode. He untargeted, sucked the pirate wrecks dry of hardware, and left without a second thought, though whether he'd run out of ammo or merely out of patience was anyone's guess. Of all that had happened to these people, I heard their voices take on the hardest tone when talking about that capsuleer.
I'd only just gotten them into the sickbeds and hooked them up when there was a warning sound. I rushed to the bridge and checked the scanners. The Ammatar ship was going critical. I hailed Jonak and yelled at him to get out, but got no response. I was about to check whether our connecting tube was still intact when there was a bright, bright flash, a shower of stars, and whatever was left of the caravan was reduced to a dead tangle of metal. Nobody could have survived that explosions, and my quick scans showed no life vessels of any kind in the vicinity. The ones we'd left on that ship were gone, and Jonak with them.
I pinched my eyes shut and rubbed my temples. You distanced yourself from this, of course you did, and you shoved it down into that place where the memories lie, but you knew it would rise again, some day.
I was about to set my ship on course when the scanners informed me that someone had entered it just before the explosion. My stomach turned, and for a moment I had the strongest feeling that it was the Angel, or one of the dead Ammatars, or someone else I didn't know at all. I immediately checked the person's identity, and breathed out deeply. It was Jonak.
***
#1: Have our guys come up with anything to explain what made Nale lose it so thoroughly?
#2: We're looking into the nanobots, whether he got too high a dose of them. Personally, I doubt we'll come up with much. Might've been the bots, or his previous illness and whatever that did to his head, or something entirely different. We don't know everything about what happened out there.
#1: And nothing useful from Zetyn?
#2: Very little. In his lucid moments he's been perfectly willing to talk, but it's half fact and half religious diatribe. Quite frankly, I don't think we can trust anything he says, other than that Nale was definitely getting unbalanced towards the end.
#1: Shame. I don't like losing operatives, or losing control of them. We're supposed to be better organized than this.
#2: I agree. But with an operation of this magnitude, you can never plan for everything. If something catches you by surprise, you deal with it as swiftly as possible, contain the ripples, and move on with your plan.
#1: My thoughts exactly.
***
I immediately asked Jonak if he was okay, and he nodded his head. I was about to ask whether he'd found anyone, but held my tongue; everyone on that ship was dead, we knew that, and Jonak's face understandably didn't look open to any more questions. And besides, we needed to take care of those three survivors on our ship.
I began keying in the course, assuming I'd be going with Jonak to sick bay, but he told me to stay at the helm. He said he could easily take care of our patients - at this point it was mostly an issue of keeping them comfy and hoping they'd survive the trip - and he preferred me to stay at the helm for manual adjustment so we could get to base in better time. I agreed, so we took off.
Warping wasn't an option with our patients, and Jonak retreated to sick bay to watch over them during our lengthy trip. We had monitors on the bridge that showed our patients' status, but I knew from experience that I'd be way too busy working with the AI to get us home in good time, so I kept them off to avoid the distraction. If anything were to go wrong, either with Jonak or the patients, several emergency procedures would immediately notify me.
At one point I did turn on the sound feed from sick bay, just to give it a quick check. All I heard was Jonak murmuring quietly to one of the patients, and, after a while, the patient whispering some response. The sick man's voice was haggardly and full of pain, and I felt very relieved that he had Jonak there with him.
***
#1: What's Zetyn's state?
#2: The same. He still suffers from acute claustrophobia and is making even less sense than he did before. We're keeping him under examination, but I doubt it'll be for much longer.
#1: Did we really get nothing useable from that man? He was a solid operative, reliable and quick.
#2: Right now, all he does is rock back and forth in the isolation compartment, asking us what the formula is. Sometimes he'll throw himself at the walls, and if he sees anyone on the other side of the safety glass, he screams himself hoarse.
***
At last we got close to base, so I hailed sick bay and said, "Docking in a few. Get ready for evac."
A couple of minutes later, I heard Jonak return to the bridge. His steps were soft and slow, and he laid a hand on my shoulder, saying, "Don't bother."
I turned and silently looked at him.
He said, "It's quiet now, back there."
I closed my eyes and sighed deeply.
We'd been so close, and with everyone we'd lost, I really had hoped we could save these three.
So we docked in silence, and we made preparations for the burial of the dead. That should have been the end of it.
Until I found that video.
Something gnawed at me, something about the whole trip I couldn't quite make sense of. On a sleepless night, some days later, I made a nocturnal trek to our offices and called up the videos from our flight. The sick bay ones hadn't been filed - we Sisters are good at humans, usually, but bad at bureaucracy - and all I could get my hands on were general monitoring records for the ship's entrances, bridge and exits.
I went over some of my own actions while I'd been in route control, and kept looking for some kind of flight bump or course deviation that I knew I hadn't made. It wasn't so much to assuage my conscience, but rather to completely eliminate the chance that what I was looking for was anything as normal as a simple mistake.
It wasn't until I had switched to the other videos and watched Jonak's miraculous entry a dozen times that I noticed what I'd been missing, or rather, what he'd been missing when he finally turned up on the bridge.
Setting the viewers to magnify and sharpen, I focused, and focused, and focused, aiming the unseen eye directly at Jonak's pocket. There was a clear bulge in there, one that definitely had not been present when he entered the caravan, nor when he came back to me on the bridge.
Focus, focus, focus.
A curved bulge, its axis slightly more voluminous, like it had a ball set in its middle.
Like the Angel had brought on board.
I didn't want to know any more. I didn't want to be on the roads that would lead to a place I'd never quite escape from. So I shut down the viewer, and I left our office, and I went home, and some time later, I finally slept.
***
#1: And this one, we're sure he never told anyone else?
#2: Positive. We took him in for soft questioning, got his report, then administered the nanobots.
#1: How's he now?
#2: We're keeping him isolated while we clear up his business and set up the accident. We should be able to execute in two weeks' time. The biggest hurdle is the coroner's reports, since the Sanctuary always has to give such incredibly detailed ones when our people die.
#1: Is it going to be a problem?
#2: No. And when he's been dealt with, along with that poor bastard Zetyn, we'll have finished this sorry little venture. The remaining catalysts have already been put into recycling.
#1: It's a shame. I liked working with him. If he hadn't taken a look at those videos, or seen what I carried back onboard the ship, he might've survived this whole damn mess of a project.
#2: Still. Loose ends.
#1: Yes. Speaking of which, there's still the matter of the Angel woman.
#2: No matter. With everyone else gone, she'll have a hard time finding anyone to believe her story. We'll keep out some long-term feelers for her, but it's nothing we need concern ourselves with. As far as this institution is concerned, the Book is tightly closed shut, forever.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the fifteenth instalment of the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Black Mountain". The next and final instalment is "Sounding the Horns of the Hunt"
The repair facility falls to pieces. The metal debris which dotted its floors now flies through the air, shaken like dust in a gale. Some of it has been here almost as long as the station itself.
For the longest time it had seemed like the station wouldn't get built at all, surrounded as it was by scandal, controversy and rocketing costs. Planetside resistance was immense, and build approvals were only ratified after the Gallente government threatened to use the planet for experiments in geoengineering. As it turned out, the station became so beneficial to planetary business that when someone suggested, years later, that commutes between the two be curtailed for reasons of security and planetary independence, it effectively ended his political career.
The facility was among the first rooms of this station to be built, and it was a symbolic one, meant to indicate that in the tumultuous process of creating the spacestation all wounds had been healed and all reputations repaired. Unfortunately, the ratification process had taken so long, and deadlines were getting so close, that shady deals were made and substandard builders were given contracts based on promises of speedy work.
While no major catastrophes occurred, various niggling problems would hound the station operators for a long time afterwards. There were always indications that some of the raw material used to build the station hadn't been quite as fresh as the builders claimed, but had instead been brought in from destroyed ships and ruined colonies nearby; the lesser the costs of transporting it through dead space, rather than constructing it from scratch down on the planet. Surprisingly, while it sometimes interfered with more complex operations, this mishmash of construction did not affect the station's basic stability - amalgamates are always stronger than pure metals - and if someone noticed an odd curve or bend in the architecture as the station was being assembled, they didn't comment.
Long after, when the station had been abandoned and cut adrift, its new inhabitants did not even venture once into the repair areas. This was a secret place, not a safe haven, and you did not dock here expecting refuge.
***
One of the pieces from the repair facility, a massive metal girder, pierces the already weakened blast doors and goes through, crashing onto the walkways below. They shudder from its impact, the tremor leading through the walkways and up into the walls, where it combines with the station's own trembling death throes until the air is filled with a discordant hum, like a hymn sung by machines at prayer. The vibrations get worse, until the station seems to be breathing, its nooks and crannies shrinking and expanding in tune. The windowframes suffer for this, and in short time the few remaining windows are shattered, even the bulletproof ones, even the blastproof ones, showering their glittering edges onto the broken paths below.
Worn hands built these walkways. Tired souls fitted the glass in its brand new window slots. There was hope and hard work here. The rumors were that the entire project might be endangered, so people pulled together, and people worked hard. Some of them didn't last, and left silently on shuttles that took them anywhere they wanted on the planet below. The ones who did make it through stood in their places of honor at the station's inauguration: Down below, in the gloominess of steel, machines and noise, where they had to be if anything broke or bent out of shape. Nobody else saw them, but they didn't need to be seen. They were everywhere, in the rivets and welds and wirings of the world around them.
***
Glass breaks all over the station. The main walkway, where the shopkeepers used to hold court, gets covered, and it's as if there was a blizzard. There are no signs here any longer, no marks of past vendors, and the only thing that lasts is the graffiti etched into the stores' metal walls. Then the walls themselves begin to topple, one after the other, revealing the dusty, vacant spaces inside. After one set of walls falls over it lets out a mass of antiques, priceless artifacts in almost pristine condition, trapped in there as if they'd been in invisible amber.
To ensure fairness and discourage agglomeration of big business, vendors were let into the station according to a weighted lottery. Some known trademarks made it in without question - Quafe was one of the first - but the end result was a varied selection of known and lesser-known names. Laws were passed on the amount of money a company could funnel into its station stores and on-station advertisements, and some restrictions were placed on the extent to which larger companies were allowed to browbeat the smaller ones into submission through sheer force of presence, but that was it. This being the Gallente, it was expected that once business started, the best man would win.
The brotherhood that had formed among the station creators did not extend to the shopkeepers, and dirty tricks became the rule. Surprisingly, the small businesses did much better than the large ones, at least initially; their owners had clearer memories of their startup days and had less inhibitions about bending the rules. Everyone loves the underdog, and every time the small businesses put one over on the big companies they became all the more popular. As time went on this led some small businesses to become medium-sized businesses, and eventually the smallest ones got squeezed out. It was harsh, but that's how it went.
When several stores banded together to create a mutually operated mall - one of the many workarounds around the merger laws - one still resisted. Since this rebel was located right in the middle of the other stores, they focused their attention, pooled their resources and, after luring away key employees who had insider knowledge of the lone business, managed to put it out of action. As it turned out, the business space was in a dead zone of the mall area, so the others merely walled it up untouched and turned it into a general notice area. For years that area would serve as a reminder of the futility to stand against free enterprise and, to more cynical eyes, as a plastic-decorated war memorial for the dead and gone. Its contents, like a sacrificial offering to god, were never spoken of nor touched.
***
Close to the shopkeepers' areas there is an open square. A gigantic piece of the roof breaks away and falls onto the square, goes through it and doesn't stop until several floors below. There is a pause, then a rumble, and what is left of the ceilings above is lit up by an orange light. The light changes, gets brighter and starker, and for a moment its glare is reflected down to the chaos below. Shadows are cast, flickering and black.
A fireball erupts from below, roars through every level and sets the floors ablaze. It doesn't scorch the debris but melts it, disintegrates it, blasting through everything in its wake until it hits the ceiling, where it spreads out like an inverted tree taking root, its magmatic tendrils trailing through the air and hissing as they land on the ground below.
This square was once the base of operations for a fledgling union movement. It started with one woman, a low-level engineer frustrated at low pay and plexiglass ceilings, who began meeting with other workers and speaking of the hazards and dangers of station repair jobs. She was charming and well-spoken, and had that governor's combination of steely presence and welcoming aura that made her audience both appreciative and attentive. When the group began to grow and people started to worry about reprimands by station authorities, she made the remarkable choice of moving their operations out into the open, settling on a small square where they spoke freely among themselves. Any outsider could stop to listen and hear their plans, or see them argue. It was a brilliant but dangerous move, and it worked; they were wiretapped, of course, but the powers that be didn't know anything more than everybody else who passed by, and eventually the crowds began to grow. When the police threatened to disband the meetings due to overcrowding, they set up keyless video feeds, ones that were streamed live through other
open datafeeds, piggybacking on their signals, and could be decoded at receiver ends with datakeys that were given out freely and anonymously. The authorities never quite knew for sure who was watching.
***
The seething magma melts through the floor and pours into tunnels and crevices below. There are crackles and sparks, and the square's electrical wirings give out for good. There is a series of twangs as the remaining cables, overstretched and overheated, finally give out, lashing their way out from the gaping hole in the center and flicking at one another like mad fencers. Eventually they, too, give out, and hang there limply, pointing at the abyss.
The authorities, annoyed at the stir the group was creating among station workers, eventually decided that people, deep down, didn't want to risk the station's own well-being, and that an aura of assistance and goodwill would better resolve the problem than harsh tactics would. So they gave in to the various demands for workers' rights the group had posed, but declared that as the station would now have to re-budget for assured self-sufficiency, and since they could not levy more taxes on the general citizenry, they would have to cut nonessential services. For some unexplained political reasons these cuts, which restricted availability of everything from unlicensed mind clash game broadcasts and non-brand egone sets to Quafe shots and low-grade alcohol, affected recreational activities enjoyed almost exclusively by the lower classes. Right after the cuts were implemented there was a surge of crowd control issues on station, to which the administrators responded by cracking down even harder on imports of various incendiary goods, adding that these restrictions would be reviewed after the workers' rights issue had been resolved. Cheap alcohol and budget risque entertainment products fell right off the radar.
It wasn't long before the masses reacted. Graffiti denouncing the workers began to appear in the more rundown areas of the station, followed by barroom conversations that got increasingly loud and spirited. The flashpoint came when a channel formerly reserved for sports was shut down and replaced with direct vidcasts from the activists' meetings. Someone in the bar put down his glass, got up, yelled incoherently at the video screen for a while, then drunkenly marched off proclaiming that he was going to give the activists a piece of his mind. Others followed, word spread, and by the time the progression got to the square it numbered in the hundreds (though minus the original instigator, who'd stopped at a street corner to pass water, fallen over his own legs, and passed out) and was in very red spirits. The activists were dragged off and nearly beaten to death. What saved them was a group of station police officials, who, eventually, made their way through the angry crowd and set up an inertial shield around the beleaguered activists. This effectively trapped them inside, like animals in a zoo, while the mob pounded on the shields from the outside.
When the crowd finally dispersed and the police lowered the shield, the activists walked away, each in a separate direction, without saying a word. Their group was disbanded from then on. The station took them in, healed their wounds, then offered them each a lucrative and quite public corporate job. They each took the offer, and worked with loyalty and dedication and unquestioning verve for the rest of their lives. Their offices, by their own request, were located so that they looked down on the square, through unopenable windows that housed bulletproof glass. Nobody else took up the mantle, and since the activists' meetings had all been broadcast through unofficial channels, station archivists did not keep copies of the group's discussions. Restrictions were lifted, alcohol and entertainment returned, and whatever it was the group had fought for was forgotten, as was the group itself.
Not every action has a reaction, and not every movement leaves a trail.
***
The living quarters have all but collapsed. The first ones to go were the high-rise buildings, spacious and fragile, followed by the ones standing unsupported next to open spaces that once housed parks and fashionable market areas. Even the apartment buildings, the stalwarts of cramped living that towered over the darker parts of the station, have given way to the fire. Remarkably, the only spaces still standing are the Rust buildings, tenements meant for people who'd fallen on the hardest of luck and were stuck on the space station with nowhere else to go. Space is always at a premium and so the Rust flats are squeezed in tight, with little space for anything but sleeping and eating and despairing. But there's such a mass of them, huddled together like animals for warmth on a cold, cold night, that they practically support each other. They don't give way until the ground itself gives, and even then they take a long time to fall.
Back in the days when its inhabitants were breathing, every now and then love floated through Rust, catching the unwary in its grasp. And sometimes he beat her, and a few times she was afraid she was pregnant by someone else, but they loved each other, and their relationship outlasted many others, for that is what love does, for better or worse. Their quarters were small but big enough, and they raised several children there, those of whom survived to adulthood eventually lived in bigger quarters than their parents, and wore grey clothes and grey faces.
***
After the Rust collapses, everything goes. Corridors throughout the station crumble, taking with them whatever they were holding. Plummeting alleys, once dark, are lit by the rumbling fires below before disintegrating. In one of these a man known as Polok can be briefly seen before he, too, falls into the fire. His work takes longer to fall, as if it wants to hang on and endure, if only a few moments beyond Polok's last breath. At last it gives way, to be licked by the flames, engulfed, swallowed whole, and in their crackling roar the unseen listener can still detect its tearless sigh of relief. Everything ends. Everything always ends.
A long time ago, a childless, middle-aged Amarrian couple walked through this territory for some unthinking reason, and in their shiny shoes and unholed clothes were set upon by several denizens of Rust. Bitter and frustrated, the inhabitants took their life's anger out on the poor couple, demanding things they couldn't give, threatening to take even more, and eventually making good on that threat. Whether by accident or brief, unthinking intention, they left the man dead in the street, and ran away before any of them thought of taking the woman's life as well.
The couple were religious, and as the man's life ran out he struggled to say a prayer he'd learned as a child, one that supposedly would guarantee his passage into the heavens. In his life he had long since learned that this guarantee would come not from words praising the next world but deeds honoring this one, but at this moment, in this cold and lonely place, it was all that came to mind. His wife, crying silently, comforted him the best he could, but he died with the prayer unfinished on his lips.
Afterwards, every year on that particular day, she would return, alone, carrying blessed water in a small container. She would go down on her knees and begin scrubbing the area where her husband had bled to death. Word spread, and it was made clear by official and religious authorities both that any unpleasantness towards this lady would lead to a scouring of Rust.
People guessed that she was trying to wash away her husband's blood from the unholy site where he'd been slain. In reality, she was sanctifying the ground that had received his warmth, and praying, to any gods that would listen, that even though her husband had not managed to finish his invocation, he would nonetheless be let into paradise.
***
And now the structure gives way for good. Central walls are shaken down, support girders are parted like chaff, and the destruction moves to the core of the station's heart. The fires tear their way through every part of the station like ink in water, so omnipresent that they can no longer be distinguished from their surroundings. This place is fire now, it has become an inferno and no longer a station, and all that remains is for the outer walls to part and crack and reveal the gutting within. A station's exterior is always the toughest part of its structure, for whatever happens inside may never be allowed to breach the outer shell.
Someone went insane. Nobody minded, because they were a colorful breed who talked to themselves, to others and to anyone who was or wasn't there; perfectly charming and civilized. An old man who walked through this little world, telling people he would go on until the end of time. He lived in the same place for most of his life, and while nobody knew when he'd moved in, everyone felt that it was as if he'd always been there. People liked him.
And now, when he's been long forgotten, a secret place is breached, somewhere that was also long forgotten by all but this man and the ones he brought here. This place is among the last to go, and it spews out whatever had been stored inside. Leather straps. Drawings and discolored photographs. Little shoes.
They're shaken out, and burned in the fire, at last, at long last.
And with that, as if breathing its own sigh of relief, the station, purified and clear in purpose, goes nova. Steel and stone, plastic and rock, and everything else that ever was, all grind themselves apart like the station is trying to fall to pieces and stay together and reach out in a thousand directions at once.
And with a flash that glows through the vastness of space, all these memories are gone.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the fourteenth instalment of the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Polymelia". The next instalment is "Dismantling".
Nale and Hona stood in front of a large warehouse. It was an unnerving place; the entire area was suffused with a strange smell, and there was absolutely no action, movement or sound detectable in the surroundings. The doors in front of them, the height of a five-story building, were locked with complicated electronic safeguards.
"Are you sure it's here?" Hona asked him.
"It's here," he said. "This is the end, and a new beginning."
"She's going to kill you," she said.
"I've died twice already," he said. "One more time won't hurt."
"Twice?" she said.
He nodded. "Once when I found out about the illness and joined the Sisters. And once on Black Mountain."
She was about to respond when the locks turned off in unison, and the massive doors creaked open.
They walked into total darkness, and the doors slowly closed behind them. The smell here was far more intense. It reminded them part of the sea and part of badly cleaned space ships.
A vast light blinked on overhead, and they saw what was in front of them. The room was dominated by a huge, open pool of pod liquid, and stretched over an expanse so vast that even with the light above they still couldn't see to the room's other end.
In the ectoplasm floated various pieces of regenerated humans, or some things that at least seemed within shouting distance of humanity, including various organs, half-formed rib cages, spines of varying sizes, and yellowish, mottled limbs. There was a square grid marked on the floor of the pool.
Lights flickered on in the entire hall. It was circular, with only two ways to get past the pool and to the other end. Across from them, a faint sight in the distance, stood Draea, with something box-shaped beside her that was covered in wires and glowing with red lights.
Speakers on the wall buzzed into life, and her voice echoed through the hall. "When I got here the pool was covered with plexiglass, and each sample was kept in a separate compartment. A few commands to the control system and all that glass slid aside. This place is so adaptable. I love it."
On her shoulder she had slung a large gun. "One of my men is busy with his hobby, but the other I've lost contact with. And I see you brought a friend, someone who looks suspiciously like I met them in the past. How did you find me, by the way? And no need to shout; there's sensors that'll pick up your voice."
"The same way I found Zetyn. I just followed the path," Nale said. Behind him, Hona, who'd shivered at the word 'hobby', slowly drew her gun.
"What path?" Draea asked.
"My own. Have you forgotten what you saw at Black Mountain?"
"I try not to think about it too much."
"Then you are lost."
"Big words coming from a-" Draea said, then stopped in mid-sentence and threw a knife at him. It hurtled through the air, aimed not at Nale but at Hona, and even at that great distance it moved so fast that she could not react in time. It speared the gun out of her hand and kept right on going. On the wall behind them there was the sound of steel breaking.
Hona looked at it, then over to Nale, then back at the remains of the knife. "Nale, she broke the knife's blade."
"We'll be fine."
"You don't understand. There's a dent in the wall. She threw that knife hard enough to break its blade."
Nale turned to her. "Don't lose faith. She was only testing us. We're doing the right thing here."
There was a sigh in the air and Nale bent almost imperceptively. The knife headed for his neck missed him by a hair's breath and, like the last, broke against the wall.
Sounding completely unperturbed, Nale asked. "Is that the Book beside you? Did you bring it here?"
Draea pointed to the box beside her. "That's it. I could wire it up from practically anywhere in this station, but I liked this place. Keeps people at a distance."
Nale visibly tensed. "Wire it up?"
"You didn't know? We're supposed to destroy it. The Society didn't trust us to do it on our own, so they made us find the thing and bring it all the way here. I've got it plugged into their system so that they can verify it hasn't been tampered with, opened up or copied. Once I give the command, those same systems will disintegrate it, to the point where there'll be nothing but atoms floating on the breeze. I'll be done with my mission and will go get my reward."
Nale stared slowly walking around the pool and towards Draea's distant form. "I saw you there," he said. "At Black Mountain. Why would you ever want to destroy the Book?"
"It's what I'm here for. Why do you want to keep it?"
"Because it can save the world."
"From what?"
"Blood. Violence. Hatred. We can change the world, Draea."
"That's nice," she said. "Tell me about Black Mountain."
"You saw it, same as me. A walk through a desert, surrounded by spirits. A hike up a steep cliff, where the spirits begin to meld and rush forth. And, beyond that, the sea of dreams, overseen by the stars."
"Why did it change us?"
"Because we were ready. I was hoping that you would also be ready for the next stage. We're getting closer to ascendancy."
"And that includes dying, does it?"
Nale stopped short at that. "What?"
"In the vision. I realized that you were dying. Is that part of this grand plan of yours?"
Nale smiled, and began walking again in her direction. "We're all dying. Just some faster than others."
Draea sighed. "Over the last few days I've gained incredible focus. I can hit harder, move faster and aim better than I ever could in my life, and believe me, I was no slouch before. I was hoping that you could cast some light on this. I'm not in the mood for religion."
"That's a shame." He began to walk faster. At that, she pulled out another knife and, without even turning her gaze away from him, threw it into the air. There was a ping as the knife ricocheted off a wall, and a scream shortly after. Far away, Hona dropped to the ground, clutching her leg.
"One more step and your girlfriend dies," she said. "Stop trying to sneak."
Nale said, "If it's necessary, then so be it," and kept on walking.
From far behind they heard Hona choke and cough. Draea grinned wide. "I'm surprised," she said. "I didn't think you had it in you."
"She's just another spirit," Nale said. "But why bother? It's me you want."
"It is?" she said, still grinning, but the grin had turned cold.
"We've had a melding of consciousness. The spirits flowed past us, participants in an endless cycle none of them can break out of. None except you and me. We stood there, on Black Mountain, and we saw the dream-sea. I accepted and joined it, I drowned, and gained an oversight over the entire world."
"And that talent allows you to dodge everything in sight."
"Yes. And it uncovered the truth of the Book and of everything surrounding it. This is something we need to do. This is what's right. You had the same experience; surely you've come to the same conclusion. We need to save this world from itself."
"No."
"No?"
"Your focus widened, fine," Draea said. "Mine narrowed. What I saw in that unconscious moment was not some hyperextended superconsciousness, it was a shrinkage. I stood atop this Black Mountain of yours, and the entire world narrowed to a point, reduced, brought directly into my aim. And now I've got you in my sights, you and your craziness."
Nale stopped cold at that.
"I would never be part of this world you want," she continued. "This grand design of yours, this satellite view, it's nothing to do with me. I am the focus; I am a laser. And all I want is to get better at what I am and what I do."
"You are hyperfocused. You are alone of your kind. You are alone in this world," he said, in a dead voice.
"You lie," she said with a smile, remembering a similar lie so long ago. "There are others like me. And now you've made up my mind."
Nale started walking again, a determined expression on his face.
Draea quite relaxedly raised the veinshredder. "Not only have you made it amply clear that you're perfectly useless at helping me improve my skills or explain what happened, but you want to rid the world of all people who harbor hatred, rage and war in their hearts. People like me. We really can't have that."
Nale was running now, far away from her but still close enough to aim at.
"So all the reasons I let you in here are no longer valid, and you've become nothing but a weak, sad opponent with delusions of grandeur," Draea said. "You're wrong, and you're probably insane. I hurt and murder and kill for my own personal reasons, but I never dream of thinking that it's morally right or just. It's what I do, nothing more or less. Some might say that it makes me a lesser monster than you, but I suppose it doesn't matter. Any last words?"
"Die," Nale said.
Draea smiled, and fired the veinshredder. The spheres zoomed towards Nale, curving gently in the air so as to compensate for his moving heat signature, but he easily slipped past them. Draea emptied the clip, but none of the shredders touched Nale's moving form as he zipped and weaved on the wide walkway. She reloaded and kept firing, her deadly missiles pinging off the walls and falling into the ectoplasm below. Nale bobbed and dodged as he ran, sweating madly, his eyes unblinking as he approached. Draea's smile faded as she concentrated on hitting him, but every shot, even as it curved towards his head and body, managed only to whiz by him and hit the walls around his running form.
At last he got too close for safe range, so Draea tossed the gun, pulled out a knife and set her feet. He lunged at her, she ducked and swiped the knife, and he wasn't quite quick enough to turn out of range, the blade leaving a bleeding surface trail on his torso. She turned, intending to plunge the knife into him, but he'd already pirouetted and now went for her knife hand, clamping on to her forearm with both his hands, stepping outside it and violently turning his shoulder into hers. She got levered down and for a split second felt like her shoulder was going to be wrenched out of its socket. He started kneeing her in the thigh and ribs, and she dropped the knife, spun around and punched him in the throat. She had little weight to put into the punch, and it was weak and flailing, but it was enough; he gagged and let go, and she yanked the arm back and started backing away, on instinct pulling out a gun and aiming it at his momentarily still form.
It was too late; he spotted it and launched after her. She dropped the gun and barely managed to put her hands up before he was on her, bowling her down to the ground, sitting on top of her with his hands closing around her throat. She buckled, rolled him over and managed to break his grip, but as she started punching and elbowing him, he was able to dodge every blow with ease. She jumped up and looked around for a weapon, any weapon, but he rose with her, more in tune with her motions than any practice partner had ever been. They exchanged blows, most of hers missing him by a hair's breath but visibly tiring him when they connected; his hitting her, but her years of work in the violence of the mining colonies had left her well-prepared for body blows.
They said nothing; the words had run out and all they had now was grunts and actions, sighs and gasps and blood. His eyes, already wild, opened even wider, and his nostrils flared. He backed up, but before she could think of what to do he ran at her again, not jumping this time but instead clamping his arms around her and running towards the open pool of pod fluid, and in sheer terror she realized that he intended to drown her. Her arms were trapped, but at he drove her backwards she managed to kick up a knee and hit him in the groin. It wasn't dead-on, impacting right above his thigh, but he stumbled, and she used that same leg to stamp down hard and spin them in the air as they fell into the pool, Draea landing on top of him.
Sounds disappeared. The liquid was viscous and warm. Nale loosened his grip and resumed hitting Draea, but the ectoplasm reduced the power of his punches. She hit back a couple of times, but he dodged so easily that she changed tactics, going instead for the throat, trying to crush his windpipe. His eyes were so wide open they nearly bugged out, and as she grasped harder, and the veins in his throat pulsated and throbbed, his lips parted, revealing teeth gritted in madness. A tiny trickle of blood weaved its way from his mouth, as if he'd bitten his tongue.
She hardened her grip but he kept hitting her, and now his blows were coming in with more force, whether from desperation or pure anger. They roiled around in the liquid, spinning in a downward helix. She was so focused on crushing his throat that she didn't immediately realize they were at the bottom, so it was his feet that got planted first, and they gave him enough pushback to hit her hard, in the temple and on the jaw. The two blows rocked her, and she realized that she was almost running out of breath. She was out of knives, too, out of weapons completely, and the look in Nale's bloodshot eyes indicated that he was really no longer there as a human being.
She made a desperate choice, letting go of his throat with one hand and punching him hard on the nose; he didn't even shirk, and kept pummeling her even as he bled freely. She felt her feet touch the floor now, and out of the corner of her eye, through the mist of blood and encroaching blackness at the edge of her vision, she spied something floating around. She grasped hold of Nale's clothes and, putting all her strength into the motion, yanked him with her towards the floating object. Nale was oblivious, pounding away, and with her receding consciousness Draea realized that he truly enjoyed this, that he believed not only that he had won but that he was right, and in his eyes and in his frenzy she saw a mind she recognized so well. The recognition echoed in her head as she got close enough to the object, half a spinal column that tapered down to a point where the sacrum should have been, and it was with infinite sadness and a fading glimpse of understanding that she reached for it, grasped it with all her might, and, before Nale could realize what she was doing, plunged it deep into his eye.
He immediately let go, pulled back and screamed, air bubbles mixing with the spurts of blood from his face. She pushed herself off the bottom and floated languidly up, too shot from adrenaline backwash and oxygen depravation to paddle with her arms. Her head was covered with goo as she rose from the pool, and she barely had enough life left to gasp for air before paddling sluggishly towards the edge.
Once she had a handhold on the pool's plexiglass border, she looked back. Nale was surrounded by a cloud of blood, but appeared to be moving towards her, like some amphibious carnivore. Her adrenaline surged and she hauled herself out of the pool, coughing and wheezing as she stumbled towards the machine. She had no illusions any more of stopping Nale, of playing with him like a toy, of grabbing a gun or a knife and facing off. He was a monstrosity, almost beyond her comprehension. Her life was secondary; all that mattered was that the Book not fall into the hands of this madman.
She reached it just as he hauled himself out of the pool, and even through his wheezing and gurgling she heard a throaty, phlegmic sound and realized that he was laughing. It stopped just as soon as he apparently saw where she was headed. He screamed incoherently, a string of almost glossolalian words, and gave chase.
She grabbed the catalyst sitting beside the Book and slammed it on top of the machine, rolling its sphere back to green and holding it there. It jittered for second, and then the sphere spun out of her control. Both it and the sensors on the Book itself rolled through their scheme of colors, blinking green, red again, then yellow, orange, blue and indigo, and just as Nale reached her with his hands going for her eyes, the sensors hit purple.
There was a loud hum, and the last thing either one of them ever saw was each other's face, Nale looking like the maddest of prophets, Draea content and grinning like a harpy. For the last time she looked deep into his eyes, and she saw him realize, at the same time as she herself did, that the reason the Society had brought them all to this prepared, pre-wired place that nobody would ever miss or wonder about if destroyed, was that this was the end, the place where they would bring armageddon to being. In that infinite moment Draea acknowledged to herself what she'd always known, what she'd been told so long ago, that all her life she had wanted to be caught, and to be caught in fiery, destructive glory.
Beside them, the machine began to glow, smoke rising from its innards. There was a rumble far away that slowly turned to a roar; the floor began to quake and the pod fluid sluiced up out of its pool; and if either one of them had hesitated in their death-dance, they would have heard the walls start to come down.
Metal tore, and plastic melted, and stone turned to glass.
And in a flash that blinded everyone in the instant before they were vaporized, the end of days arrived, and the entire station exploded like a nova.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the thirteenth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "The Sanctuary". The next instalment is "Black Mountain".
Zetyn came to, and rubbed his head. He was wearing most of his clothes but had lost all his gear and, oddly, his shoes. His bare feet felt cold on the hard metal floor.
He was sitting in the centre of a small crossroads. It was dark in there but not too dark to see, and as he looked around he saw that everything - the floor, the ceiling, every wall - was made of equal size metal panels. The wall panels had inset windows made of thick, glasslike material that rang out dully when Zetyn reached up and knocked on it.
Faint fluorescent lights shone out between the edges of the panels, giving the space a dusky luminescence. The corridors were wide enough for a man to barely touch them with arms outstretched, but the ceiling was low and oppressive.
There were four ways he could go, but each way was a tiny cul-de-sac, terminating in another metal panel. Zetyn had no idea how he had even got in here.
He went to his hands and knees again, feeling too unsteady to walk. His head still throbbed, so he crawled all the way to the end of one corridor. He reached the end not even intending to put his weight on the wall but simply to touch his forehead there, against the cool wall. As he did there was a crackle, a feeling like a million little needles all jabbed into his head, and he was thrown backwards with a scream.
He lay on the floor, quivering and breathing rapidly. He felt his forehead but there didn't seem to be any bleeding, though he was now sweating so much that it was hard to tell in the gloom.
A voice spoke, "That was stupid."
He looked up. There was no one there.
The voice spoke again. "Try the other doors."
Zetyn dragged himself to his feet, being careful not to touch anything around him. He focused inward, pushing his panic down, reaching back to all those times he had been surrounded by blood and despair and yet had kept his head. His body finally stopped trembling, and he started looking around, wondering who it was that was watching him.
The watcher apparently misunderstood his intent, for the voice said, "Oh, the side walls are perfectly safe to touch."
Zetyn didn't trust him. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I'm the one who put you here."
"Why? What's this all about?"
"Not dying," the voice said, with an emphasis that implied this would be the last it would speak for now.
Zetyn gingerly made his way to another end of the crossroads. On the way there he peered out the windows but saw nothing on the other side. There were perhaps the faintest outlines of other windows beyond them, but Zetyn was not sure if it was really that or just a reflection of his own corridor.
He stood in front of another door - the ends of the corridors looked exactly the same as the rest, but the voice had called it a door and Zetyn was now starting to do the same - and took a deep breath. He reached out a hand and paused, listening intently for anything - the crackle of static, the faint whisper of a laugh, anything - but there was total silence.
He pulled his hand back a little, then punched it forward, smacking his entire palm against the panel.
Nothing happened. His jaw began to ache, and he realized he was gritting his teeth.
The voice piped up again and said, "Well done." The panel he'd touched slid aside, revealing another crossroads beyond that looked exactly the same as the one he was in.
Zetyn stood there for a while, not crossing over, beginning to realize the kind of predicament he was in. He wondered whether to try for flattery, then decided it was too early and he might as well test his warden's ego before getting hit even harder. "I'm not sure I trust this thing. You made it?"
"Yes," the voice said, with no discernible pride.
"How do you know it won't just kill me outright?"
"That depends on the choices you make. But it'll work like I say it works."
So. He was convinced of his abilities, at least, Zetyn thought. He stepped over the boundary and into the new crossroads. Behind him, the new panel slid noiselessly back into place.
"Is there a single exit here as well?" Zetyn asked.
The voice said, "Possibly."
"And anything that's not an exit..."
"Will be a circuit closer. The floor's electrified, but you're fine so long as you don't touch the wrong exit. I might be a little more lenient if you can tell me anything juicy about your friends"
Zetyn rubbed his eyes. "I dunno what you're talking about. Is that the reason? Did your own people put you up to it? Why are you doing this?"
"Well, the setup itself is a little experiment of mine, one I've always wanted to do. Behavioral therapy and biofeedback research. And yeah, I wouldn't mind knowing more about the people you travel with. But really, this whole thing ... with all the stress and annoyance you've put us through in the whole hunt, I wanted to set the world right again, and find a quiet little corner in it for myself. So I guess you could say I'm putting you through this just because I can."
And that was that. It was, Zetyn had to admit, the most honest answer he could possibly have received to the question.
He stalked to the opposite end of the crossroads and put his hand on the panel with determination and vigor, both of which disappeared the instant his flesh touched the metal. There was a crackle, and Zetyn screamed and dropped to his knees, clutching his hand.
Above and around him, the voice casually stated, "You know, as a hint, there's only one way out of this particular section. All you need do is find it."
Zetyn got back to his feet, stumbled to another part of the crossroads, tried to empty his mind before he touched it, and was immediately thrown back from the force of the shock."
"There you go," the voice said. "Only one possibility now."
Zetyn was on the floor, breathing rapidly, tears of shock running down his face. The panic rose and he couldn't hold it down, so he let it grow, let it erupt, and let the anger take over. He rolled to his hands and feet, sprang up and ran screaming at the fourth and final door, slamming into it with all his might. His shoulder hit first and the impact numbed him down to the fingertips, jarring his entire frame, and left him in a heap, on his knees, his head hanging down.
In front of him, the door slid open.
"I admire your verve, if not your intelligence," the voice said. "I hope you can keep it up, little nestling."
"What..." Zetyn tried to speak, but had to catch his breath. "What kind of place is this?"
The voice, sounding happy to be asked, immediately replied, "The panels aren't that special, least not the base design. They're electricity-based, more than you realize, and can be programmed to do any number of things, from electric fences to vidcasting. This place has an insane amount of them, probably mean to construct a training grounds."
As Zetyn half-crawled into the next chamber, the voice continued, "They're set on tiny rails that slide under their own power and can be made to continually reposition the panels, so that you've got a self-adaptive, semi-autonomous scaffolding. It doesn't even have to be big; the one you're in is only a few rooms back and forth, constantly sliding and adjusting. I give the system a few parameters and it does the rest."
"And what were your parameters?" Zetyn asked in a hoarse voice.
"Make a deadly maze," the voice said shortly, then returned to talking about the hardware. "Regular panels can't have their electricity set too high, but that's easily fixed if you know what you're doing. The first versions were far more potent but got outlawed shortly after, when people started getting seriously hurt. They were called skinners, and the name stuck."
Zetyn really didn't want to know, but he asked nonetheless. "Skinners?"
"From how they could skin the flesh off your bones if you weren't careful."
Zetyn sighed. He sat with his back up against a wall, eyes closed, head hanging down.
The voice said, "Look up."
He didn't look up.
The voice said, "If you look up, little nestling, I'll tell you which door is the right choice."
Without letting the damning, spiteful thoughts of his own cowardice surface in his mind, he looked up.
There, behind a glass pane, stood a man. He was a Caldari, rather thin, with a silly haircut and a pale face. He had a stare that Zetyn recognized; it was the gaze of a man who no longer saw the life around him, or felt part of it. Zetyn had seen it in dying people, and in those who'd caused their deaths.
"I'll be your guide," the man said, and his voice suffused the chamber.
Zetyn stood up and walked to the window. He stared at his tormentor for a while, then snarled and slammed his palm hard on the glass. The man didn't even blink. It was stupid, Zetyn knew, and wouldn't do anything to help him get out of there, but he couldn't help it. He composed himself and said, "What is your name?"
"Krezek," the man said. "What is yours?"
"Zetyn."
"Glad to meet you, Zetyn. Take the first door on the left."
"How long do you intend to keep me here?"
"As long as you need."
"Need for what?"
"To get out. The parameters for the skinner rails generate a code-based maze. If you figure it out, you can go free without so much as a scratch. If not, well, you won't."
Zetyn said, "I was never good at maths."
"That's a shame. Especially since the code is self-modifying based on operational feedback. Make too many mistakes and the patterns will start to change, and you'll need to start all over again."
"And you're going to stand there, to watch."
"For people like you, I've got all the time in the world," Krezek said.
"People like us?"
"Nitwits who think they can change the world, make it unstable. I wonder where your friends are."
Zetyn looked around the empty metal maze. "I wonder that myself. In fact, I wonder if I know them at all."
"You're not with them, I take it. You just got pulled along for the ride. A victim," Krezek said.
"No more victim as anyone else, I suppose," Zetyn said, "but at this time, in this place, I have no friends. Guess I should get better at making them."
Krezek, leaning in a little closer, said, "I suggest you also get better at maths, real quick, and stay away from the electric skinners. Eventually the shocks will wear out your heart, and you'll start to get palpitations. They can be quite unpleasant, I hear. Fatal, even."
Zetyn stared at him, then walked away silently and headed for the first door on the left.
***
His flesh felt like it was going to tear itself off his body, and he didn't care. He'd stopped crying; had left behind those gasping sobs of sorrow and hope, and moved beyond them, into a place of darkness and acceptance. His hands wouldn't stop trembling, but he viewed them outside himself. He was a machine now; his sole purpose to keep moving, keep looking, keep being shocked and keep opening doors, until he could finally find the one that would end this.
At one point he'd pressed a lucky door and suffered no shock, but the floor panel itself had slid aside, dropping him so far that when he landed and his head hit the ground, he'd heard the crunch on the inside of his skull.
Sometimes the panel overhead would open, and he'd be forced to climb up, his entire body shaking with the effort. The first time this had happened he hadn't noticed, and had screamed with frustration, thinking this was the end and all he could do now was roam around until he finally died.
Krezek had followed along; sometimes voicing support or commentary, sometimes appearing in windows. He had, he said, programmed the skinner complex so as to always afford him a parallel route to Zetyn's gauntlet, so that he could follow along and peer in on his subject whenever he wished.
And so it might have gone till infinity and oblivion, but Zetyn heard a whisper. It said, "Right turn, and watch the floor."
Zetyn looked up. On the other side of a glass panel stood Krezek, as usual, with his composed, aloof expression. The whisper had not been his voice; it was full and resonating while Krezek's voice, with which he'd spoken at full volume the entire time, was a pinched and whiny thing, like a winged insect trying to escape from under a thumb. Krezek didn't appear to have noticed it.
Zetyn wondered momentarily if this were a trick, but discounted the notion. His torturer's mind games were mechanical, not interpersonal.
He hauled himself over to the right-hand door and stood in front of it. He told himself he was weighing his options, but in truth, he was trying to savor the moment, to enjoy the budding little seed of hope that could blossom into the assurance of deliverance. The instant he would touch the door, he'd know.
Then he remembered what the voice had said about the floor, and he turned on the spot, putting his back against one side of the corridor and pressing his legs against the other end. It hurt like blazes, but the pain felt good, and he used it to push harder, until he was reasonably sure that he wouldn't tumble down if the floor gave out.
"What are you doing?" Krezek said from behind the glass prison walls.
"Changing the game," Zetyn muttered, not truly caring whether his tormentor heard him. Keeping himself clamped up against the walls, he reached out one hand and gingerly touched the door. If this failed, he knew, he would die; the last ember of hope would be extinguished and he'd fall down like a pile of dead ashes.
His finger brushed the door. There was no current, no arc, no crackle. The floor panel beneath him merely slid open in silence, and Zetyn let himself slide down slowly as well, trying his hardest not to hope.
He hadn't been on the new floor for five seconds when the whisper was heard again. "Opposite door." He got up, walked over and pressed its panel. It opened.
He walked through, and the whisper said, "Left turn." Through a glass panel he saw Krezek show up, running along. Krezek's face registered surprise, the first expression he'd shown so far.
Zetyn turned left, rushed through that door, and waited for further instructions. There were none, and for a moment he thought his benefactor had abandoned him. Then Krezek showed up on the other side of a nearby glass partition, and Zetyn understood. The whisperer wanted to make itself known.
"The next one is going to be left, then straight, left again, right and the ceiling, and straight," the stranger said. It was no longer a whisper but a full-fledged voice, and while there was an odd tonality to it, Zetyn immediately recognized its owner. It was coming from Nale.
"Who is that? Who's there?" Krezek demanded. He put his face up against the glass and goggled at the room, his head moving back and forth. When he saw no one but Zetyn, he seemed to settle down a bit, and even flashed a brief smile.
Nale spoke up again, "Actually, you think you can memorize a longer sequence?"
Over Krezek's outraged screams, Zetyn grinned and nodded.
"All right. Take the ones I told you, then left, left, straight, left and floor, right and floor, straight, right and ceiling, left. Got it?"
"Got it," Zetyn said and set off, Krezek yelling at him all the way. It occurred to Zetyn that his upset wasn't perhaps from fear of his own life from the intruder, but from frustration that this little world he'd created was being upended. In his rush of hope and relief, he couldn't help but feel amused.
Nale kept giving him directions, and Krezek kept yelling. There were bangs and hammerings on the panels, which Zetyn imagined were from Krezek either taking out his frustrations or scampering around trying to find Nale. If Krezek's description of the maze had been right, Nale would have had to have been incredibly inventive to hide from the man, but he'd apparently succeeded so far. Zetyn himself had discovered new reserves of energy and was now rushing through the maze at high speed, slowed only by the time it took the doors to open.
And eventually, they got to the end. Zetyn stepped through yet another open door, and the corridor he entered was lit up with a green light. It was small and faint, but in the endless gray gloom Zetyn had suffered it felt like a blazing torch was shining into his eyes. He stumbled towards the light, feeling with his hands, and found that it was a panel set in the door on the opposite side of the crossroads. The panel was about the size of Zetyn's chest and had no borders. Its black surface had a green hue about it and was overlaid with a grey rectangular grid. When Zetyn touched the surface his finger left green ripples, as if he'd dipped it into water, and the grid realigned itself into concentric circles. He touched it again, and it changed to a series of digits. Another touch, another ripple, and the grid changed color to a bright turquoise and reverted back to squares.
"Good luck with that," Krezek said. He was standing on the other side of a glass panel right by Zetyn's side. Their faces were half an arm's length apart, and at that moment Zetyn wished more than anything he had in his life that he could punch through the glass and tear Krezek's throat out.
"The lock is adaptive. It will adjust to everything you touch and realign its key accordingly," Krezek said.
"You're such a delightful human being," Zetyn said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice. He was so close to getting out, he could feel it in his bones.
"The adaptation formula is based half on the one that modified the maze you just got through. So with your little drone helper hovering around somewhere, and believe me, I will catch him eventually, you shouldn't have any problems."
Zetyn thought about that sentence, and the quiet satisfaction it seemed to exude. He said, "What's the other half?"
"A code only I know."
"... right."
"You can find it, mind you. As soon as you'd left the first room, I dropped in a note in there with the code. All you need to do is backtrack to the start. Shouldn't be hard. Oh, and the currents in everything but that black panel are now lethal."
"You do enjoy this," Zetyn said, trying to keep calm and desperately hoping Nale had something up his sleeve.
"Damn straight I do. And while you're been working your way through my maze, I've been readjusting the panel controls. I know exactly where your little angel is going to be this time around, and even if I can't get to him, all I need to do is electrify every panel in his room, and he'll be gone."
"We better get it right the first time around, then," Nale said, appearing behind the glass on Zetyn's other side. "Do as I say at all times. First touch the upper right corner of the panel to reset it."
Zetyn did so. Both of his people, angel and demon, watched the scene closely.
"Now, don't touch the panel. Instead, slowly hover your finger over its top left corner and drag it to the right, as if you're tracing a straight line. When you get to the end, bring the finger back to the left, just below where you started, and do the same. Push the panel only when I say."
"What are you doing?" Krezek said.
"Getting him out," Nale said. "Do it."
Zetyn started, slowly tracing his finger a fraction over the panel's surface. He hadn't made more than three passes when Nale suddenly said, "Push and repeat."
Zetyn obeyed, touching the screen, then starting again. It took a few more passes this time, and he was almost down to the bottom of the screen when Nale gave the command. Each time he pushed, the screen would realign itself into new types of grids and colors.
And there came a point where Nale told him to stop, and said, "This one will be the last. Once you touch it, and once the door opens, run and don't look back."
Krezek, who'd fallen sullenly silent, exploded. "You couldn't possibly have done that! There is no way you could have backtracked to the first room, gotten in, and gotten back out without altering the skinning order. How the hell have you been doing this?!"
"Faith," Nale said, which shut him up.
Zetyn pushed the panel. It made ripples that spread continuously outwards to its edge, so that the panel was still rippling by the time the door slid open.
Zetyn ran through, into a long corridor with a light at the end, and did not even hesitate as he went through the light and was in the air, flying and running, and even after he fell into the safety net below, his feet were still moving. He scrambled out of the net, not sparing even one glance upward, and made it down to the ground proper, where he managed all of ten steps before the adrenaline ran out and his legs gave way. He crawled on all fours until he made it to a wall, and noticed with an ugly grimace that he instinctively shied from touching it. He made himself lean up against it, and turned around, looking at his old prison.
The maze was a strange thing when seen from the outside. It was like a facsimile of a piece of pollen; a roundish creation from which protruded countless metal bars and jutting panels. Its metal gleamed in the lights from the ceiling. Every now and then a panel would be retracted and another pushed out instead. Clearly, the maze was still reconfiguring itself. He wondered if Nale and Krezek were still in there. If Krezek were to emerge as the winner, Zetyn didn't even know if he could find the energy to scamper away. He kept an eye peeled on the one exit in the maze, the one he'd come out through.
The panels stopped moving. There was silence, then a few bangs, then nothing. Zetyn held his breath.
There was a whirring sound. A panel slid over the exit, and the maze was sealed.
Zetyn exhaled, and kept exhaling until his vision darkened, his eyes rolled back in his head and his consciousness faded away to blissful oblivion.
***
A noise awoke him with a start. It came from around him, but his first instinct was to look up at the maze, and he saw that it was open again.
He scrambled to his feet, unsteadily. It felt as if he'd been sleeping for days. He didn't know whether Krezek might be around somewhere.
There were steps to his right. His heart did double beats.
Out of the shadows, Nale appeared. He walked close to Zetyn but remained out of arm's reach. "Rest easy," he said. "I am still with you."
Something in his manner made Zetyn's flesh crawl, but he attributed it to the horror of the maze. "Krezek?" he asked.
"Krezek is gone," he said.
Zetyn felt awash with relief. He started to crawl towards him but Nale backed away slightly. "I have work to do now," he said.
"What do I do? Are you going to get Monas?"
"Monas is gone, too," Nale said. "I could only save you."
Zetyn covered his face and tried to keep his breathing steady. After he felt he could speak again, he said, "So what now?"
"You go by yourself. Get to our ship. Leave."
"And go where?"
"Back to our people. Tell them what happened." Nale turned and started to walk away, but hesitated and said, "Well ... leave out the ugly parts, though."
"What are you going to do?"
"Find salvation," he said, and resumed walking away.
Zetyn watched him recede, and realized that he might never get another chance to ask a question that had been burning into his mind. "Nale?"
"Yes?"
"How did you manage it? In the maze."
Nale smiled faintly. "I listened to the rails, the way they slide together. I didn't conceptualize Krezek's mathematical formula, whatever it was. I simply saw everything as it was, and acted accordingly."
"And the code?"
"I watched Krezek as your hand hovered over the panel. His eyes told me when to press."
Zetyn stared at him. Finally he said, "Nale?"
"Yes?"
"Don't take this as any kind of judgment, please, but I don't even think I know who you are anymore. I love you, man, I truly do, but you've gone through the wall of craziness and out the other side. Whatever you are, I doubt it's human."
Nale's smile turned into a grin. "We're all just limbs of the same body. Good luck, my friend." And he was gone.
After a while, Zetyn got to his feet, and started making his way back to the ship.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the twelfth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "A Pleasant Surprise". The next instalment is "Polymelia"
The keyword for the Sisters is care. Not only care for others, but care for themselves. Carefulness, in fact. They've gone to great lengths in establishing themselves as a neutral party in the world of New Eden, and while some activities among their internal factions may be less than savoury, their name still stands unflecked and untainted.
The bulk of the Sisters' factional manpower is drawn from their synonymous corporation, the Sisters of EVE (SoE). This manpower is applied in all manner of ways, depending on both the individual projects at hand and the agendas of the three blocs that make up the Sisters faction. Sometimes the Sisters need faithful healers; sometimes they need worldly diplomats; and sometimes they need people of quite a different caliber.
The first bloc is the SoE themselves. As has been chronicled elsewhere, the SoE is a philanthropical organization dedicated to bettering the life of New Eden's denizens. After their performance in the Caldari-Gallente war and the Minmatar recession from Amarr, they gained the grudging respect not only of the four major empires but of various other factions as well. The SoE are the only party which can freely enter war zones irrespective of which forces are locked in combat, and they are renowned - or notorious - for assisting pirate factions in rescue operations, often following capsuleer attacks. While the SoE never choose sides in any fight, it has to be said that as a rule they do not think highly of capsuleers and their unfettered indulgence of bloodshed and mayhem; and, in fact, much of their information and even some of their equipment tends to come from faction pirates as thanks for having saved the lives of those who the capsuleers left for dead.
The second bloc is the Food Relief corporation. While Food Relief (FR) are ostensibly responsible for delivering necessities - primarily food and medicine - to those in need, they have taken a few steps into the political arena. Those steps are tentative and small, as befits any agency whose goodwill and clout are based primarily on its neutrality, and are for the most part focused on diplomatic relations such as improving dialogue with both army leaders and insurgents. FR have never officially withheld their deliveries, but in recent times there have been occasions where their medicine drops were delayed or reduced due to unforeseen events - environmental conditions, usually, or a sudden outbreak of hostility on their caravan routes - and some political analysts maintain that these delays indirectly affected the outcomes of other factions' military campaigns. The warring forces may not need FR's supplies, but they do need some manner of public support, and if the public is made to starve, so will its support. Once the media then picks up on the suffering innocents and starts broadcasting their images throughout the constellation, it becomes even more apparent to the warring factions that FR should be given due reverence and assistance.
It should be noted that the Food Relief corporation itself only deals with administrative matters, such as where to focus its drops and how much it should give to each side. The SoE contains the workforce pools themselves, and FR and the Sanctuary both draw on them when engaging in projects. The disparity between the SoE and FR is administrative for the most part, though there are subtle ideological differences: The SoE bring healing to the masses and proclaim their faith, while FR is more focused on practicality, numbers and diplomacy.
The third bloc is the Sanctuary. It is a scientific research institute, and is easily the most secretive of the three. This secrecy may seem to run counter to the institute's purpose, but has proven vital for the Sanctuary to maintain complete neutrality. There are various forces in New Eden who would much like to gain access to the Sanctuary's data on troop movements, combat avoidance tactics and combat stress resistance techniques. There are also various forces in the world of the media who would be very interested in publicising information on the Sanctuary's theological research. A century's worth of goodwill has gotten the Sisters far, but it wouldn't take much for the public's fascination with cults and occultism to override that goodwill, particularly in an organization so revered for its benevolence. Everyone loves a fall from grace.
The Sanctuary, as with Food Relief, is an administrative institution. They have their overseers and their employees, but their test groups are pulled from the SoE. However, this should not imply that the members of the SoE are all part of a faceless mass, waiting to be chosen at random by the powers above. Each member will, if he shows loyalty and talent, be given the chance to offer his services to the bloc he prefers, and work for them on a permanent basis. Faith, diplomacy and science all have their place.
This factional division, natural as it is, has caused some ideological disparity among the Sisters blocs. As a result, its leaders have been developing new ways to unify their forces. Despite some initial hesitance on the leaders' side to encourage it, the most effective way is in fact one that has cropped up naturally among the workers themselves.
The Sisters have always been unified in love, but they are also increasingly becoming unified in hate. This is not as paradoxical as first might seem. Everything has its inverse, and if you truly and honestly devote yourself to a particular entity, whether it's a physical object, a living thing or an abstract ideal, you will invariably find yourself at odds with that entity's antithesis and enemies. The Sisters of EVE have devoted themselves to saving lives, helping the sick & wounded, and gently prodding humankind to sacred ascendancy; and what foils them at every turn, in greater measure than politics and weaponmaking and natural disaster, is a force that continues to grow: The capsuleers.
Of course this is an oversimplification, and the people in the Sisters of EVE realize that as well as anyone else. Capsuleers, in and of themselves, are no more of a uniformly evil force than any average Empire subculture, and they are nowhere near the only one that routinely causes death and destruction. There are countless atrocities performed on any number of planets, let alone in space, by groups and armies and factions entirely unrelated to ship pilots. But to the minds of many Sisters, and even of many others, the capsuleers have come to represent this malevolent nadir of humanity: They are powerful, and they use that power in the ways of the old gods, delivering it with fire and noise and blinding lights and leaving a wake of anguish, all in the name of whim and immediate desire.
This has given the Sisters something to rally around, and even if it's subtle, it helps them do their job, cursing and growling at the concept of capsuleers while they patch together yet another whimpering group of collateral damage. It should be noted that since the Sisters of EVE cannot afford to antagonize the capsuleers, they use only dutifully appointed representatives that actually quite like ship pilots. But on the ground floor, things are a little different, and with this kind of dark unification factor, there will always come those who take it too far and want to become proactive. There have been stories of the SoE doing more arms training than before, and of Food Relief taking decisions that are decidely more militaristic in nature, even going so far as to demand personal information on capsuleers in exchange for providing assistance.
In and of themselves, these developments are not that surprising: The SoE always have to be ready for combat and thus periodically renew their teaching syllabus, generally putting a higher focus on self-defence each time; and Food Relief want to plan their operations without having to fear interference by rogue capsuleers, which means they have to know something about them. It is the Sanctuary who have taken their anti-capsuleer stance to the furthest and most dangerous point, and they are the one corporation within the entire Sisters of EVE faction that can now be said - carefully, for nothing they've done has been proven, and as the Sisters tread with care around us, so must we around them - be schisming from the rest. There were even hushed rumours of their theo-technological research having taken dark and occult turns. One particularly enduring tale is that at some point an informant gave the Sanctuary information about something called a Book of Emptiness, a powerful machine once developed and hosted by the Society of Conscious Thought but now adrift in space, and that this same informant included a piece of proof called an Oblivion Cocktail that was based on the same tech. It is said that it was easy work to adjust the Sanctuary training of its SoE recruits in order to prepare for possible engagement over this thing - search and rescue missions were already part of their agenda - and to filter out from the SoE masses anyone who was immune to the Book's effects and vulnerable to the Sanctuary's propaganda. If true, this godsend would give the Sanctuary an opportunity to further its agenda without sharing too much with the other blocs, to a point where they might even attempt to gain control of the entire Sisters faction, followed by so much else. The current status of this rumoured project remains unknown, but given how far-fetched it sounds, the public doesn't seem much bothered. Besides, even if it is true, there is cause to rejoice, for the rumour has a second part: There is a counter-revolution within the Sanctuary, a force of individuals who are against this secret development, having seen its subtle poison, and want to turn the corporation away from its evil, dangerous path and back towards the Sisters' true purpose, without risking that their corp or the faction as a whole lose its reputation and power in the process.
If one lends credence to rumours, it might be assumed that these underground forces for good don't stand much of a chance, for evil tends to prevail. But the Sisters of EVE are masters at handling themselves in adverse conditions, and it is in their nature to face reality and deal with a situation as it is, not as they'd like it to be. They will not be led by dogma for long.
This counter-revolution, if it exists at all, will undoubtedly proceed under the Sisters byword. They will let their enemies think that everything is alright until the time is right, and they will not impose on, expose or affect anything until they are ready. They will be efficient, and they will be swift, and they will be very, very careful.
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This is the eleventh instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "The Canvas". The next instalment is "The Sanctuary"
Draea's team was convinced they'd thrown off any trails, and contacted the Society for further flight instructions. They received a bookmark labeled "hidden kitz", along with two pieces of coding information that they added to data chips they'd picked up along the way.
The bookmark took them to an ancient stargate that looked like it was falling to pieces. There was no detectable activity on any part of the gate, and after trying several times to establish basic contact Krezek threw up his hands in disgust.
"Have you tried the password?" Draea said. She was sitting at the controls on the other side of the bridge, running last-minute checks on their weapon systems in case the gate flung them anywhere interesting.
"There's no point in trying the password unless I can get a channel to the gate."
"Try the password."
"There's no point!"
"Krezek-"
"No!"
Polok, who was standing behind Draea, leaned in and murmured, "We're all on edge here, so don't push the boy too hard. Remember the nestlings."
She stared at him in incomprehension, then ordered Krezek to get out of his seat. She moved over to his place, and he started hovering around her like a parent having his infant inspected, asking what she was planning to do. She said, "I'm planning to drill a hole in your head if you don't stop breathing down my neck. Go have a drink."
Polok hung back, without comment. Once Krezek had left, Draea said to him, "I don't think that the dead piece of metal we're seeing on the screen is only that and nothing more. I'm going to open a monoplex channel to the gate and throttle transfer from the data chip. You, on the other hand, are going to explain the nestlings."
Polok had taken Draea's old seat and was leaning back in it so much that he could place his feet up on the control board. He grinned and said, "I figured you knew about this already. Krezek and I worked on some assignments a few years back. Ugly stuff, mostly, with a lot of tense downtimes and waiting in bad places, so we ended up shooting the breeze. Krezek was good backup, by the way, but he was an absolute A-type who just had to do things in his own orderly, logical fashion. He gets a strange kind of peace out of it, and if things get too chaotic - not messy, just nonlinear - he'll develop some really weird tension relievers."
"So far, nothing new," Draea said, "neither on the gate nor Krezek. Nestlings, explain."
"When Krezek was a boy he was, like the rest of us, rather ... special. Brilliant, but he had no concept of right or wrong, or why on earth he should follow social mores. I do this stuff because I like it, you do it for whatever reason you have, but to Krezek, death and torture are just ways of relieving the tension, and bringing the universe back to order."
"Still nothing. Maybe I should open multiplex instead. Keep going," Draea said.
"One day, after he'd suffered some particularly vicious beatings from his stepdad, or his teacher, or whoever put that dark little seed into his childhood head, he went down to the local bird-feeding park and sat down by its little pond. They were using Soft Crumbs there, you know, stuff that's chemically designed to attract birds so they won't be frightened off by hyperactive, screaming kids. So he brought a few bags of Crumbs, tossed a handful out into the pond in front of him, and these tiny little baby birds start swimming up to him. And Krezek, wonderful, twisted Krezek, starts picking them out of the water, them so calm and relaxed from eating all that chem-laced bread, and he wrings their necks. He picks nestling after nestling out of the water, calmly twists its neck so its tiny beak is pointed towards its tail, and lays it to the side, until he's got a nice big pile of dead little birds. And the funny thing is, he doesn't do it with any kind of menace or satisfaction. It simply feels like something he needs to do, to fulfill his role and adjust the balance of the cosmos or what have you. He opens bag after bag of Crumbs, tosses endless handfuls to the poor young, and by the end the pile of birds is bigger than he is. He only stopped because his hands were getting too greasy from their down."
Draea stared at him. "That's ... messed up," she said at last.
"Yes."
"I've cut more throats than an army of barbers, and that's still way messed up."
"That's Krezek. Any luck on the transmissions?"
"No, but I've got an idea. We've been sending this signal encoded - which is stupid because there's nobody here to spy on it anyway - but since we're not actually getting a response from the gate, we've no idea whether it's accepting the transmission method. And if it isn't, the rest of the message it receives is just going to be some random stream of garbage. I'm going to try sending it with just the base encoding, nothing fancy."
"Is this all highly complicated?"
"Mmm, not so much. Why?"
"Because I've been looking at the control board, and you've been doing quite a bit more than just hailing the gate."
"Mind your own business," she said, without much rancor, but paused her actions.
"It's almost as if you're sending data to someone else, too."
"Yeah?"
Polok ambled over and sat down beside her. "It's no mystery, you know."
A smile crept into Draea's features.
He continued, "I don't mind. I like a good fight. But I can't help wonder why you want him. I doubt he could fight his way out of a tent."
She said, "To be honest, I'm not even sure myself. You can have the rest of them as far as I'm concerned, but him, I need to talk to. When we activated the Book, something happened, and he was part of it. You didn't have any visions during the blackout, did you?"
"Nope. Stone cold," he said.
"Figured. I did."
"And he was in it?"
"He was. And what's more, it feels like we're connected now. He feels like the other side of me, one I wasn't even aware that I had."
Polok gave her a strange look.
"I know," she said. "I don't like it much, to be honest. I saw some things in the fugue that I need to clear up, and I've got an ugly feeling that if I don't deal with him now, he's going to become a much, much bigger problem later on. So I'm leading him to us."
"How do you know it wasn't just some total hallucination?"
"Two reasons. First, it felt more real than anything. Second, well ... toss a bullet." She pulled out a small knife from her belt, and stood up, but remained where she stood and did not turn to face the bridge.
Polok looked at her askew, but got up, pulled out a gun, took out its clip and dislodged a bullet. The manufacturer's initials had been stamped on the circumference of its rear end.
"Face the bridge," Draea said, still facing away from him and staring out at the stars. "Toss. No countdown, just toss."
He shrugged, and threw the bullet in the air, away from them.
Draea leaned her head down, closed her eyes and lifted her shoulders. She then raised the knife and, without turning, threw it back over her head.
She kept her eyes closed, and heard Polok say, "However the hell you did that, you shouldn't have been able to. And you owe me a bullet."
She laughed, sat again and opened her eyes, then pressed the activation button for the data sequence to the gate. For a few moments, nothing happened. Then there was a spark, a series of sparks, and the gate became illuminated in electricity which arced towards their ship and surrounded it. Draea saw her vessel start to move, align, prepare and, finally, warp.
A few seconds later, they dropped out of warp in front of an abandoned station of Gallente design.
They flew up to it. Draea transmitted the second code she'd received, and the station, its immense bulk floating inert in space, opened its docking bay and pulled their ship inside.
***
Once they were safely docked, they got out of the ship and into the bay proper. A special container for the Book was waiting for them, so they yanked it out of its original box, which they'd been wheeling around on an electric pallet, and put it into the container. It instantly closed and auto-sealed.
Using passwords sent by the Society, Krezek accessed the station's status monitors and found that large parts of the station were dark: Not in use and unable to power up to any kind of active functionality, although the atmosphere systems were apparently kept working on minimum capacity. The only fully functioning areas were a few kilometers away, in a complex of labs both scientific and otherwise. Krezek got more and more excited the further he inspected the data; apparently these were real complexes, with hi-tech facilities, torture labs - no one had said the Jove were nice - and all sorts of automated machinery to change the systems around and even alter their interior architecture. The deeper one got, the more mutable the systems appeared to be.
Polok asked Draea, "Those passwords for the station controls, you didn't share those as well, did you?" She shook her head.
Krezek was too enraptured to notice. He said, half to himself and half to anyone in the vicinity, "Gods, I'd love to try out some of the stuff they've got here. Do you see this? Self-modifying walls! And it's all wired up. It's like the blueprint for the world's biggest rat maze."
"What's keeping you?" Polok asked.
"Well, there's not much I can do with it, apart from make it reform itself. I'd need a live subject if it's to be any fun."
Polok looked at Draea, then back at Krezek. "I think there I can offer a pleasant surprise."
***
The Sisters ship docked at the abandoned Gallente station. Its crew - a blithe Nale, a watchful Zetyn, a frowning Monas and a very angry Hona - made its way onto the bay.
Nale had plugged the tracking device into his ship and used it to find his way here, though it wasn't until the device received data directly transmitted from Draea's own ship computer that they'd really taken off.
Zetyn checked if they could access the station's status monitors, but no luck.
Nale took the lead. They took another few careful steps, Nale at the forefront, until he stooped and picked something up. It was a little bronze pellet, and as soon as he touched it, tiny blades shot out and nicked his fingers. He didn't flinch, but lifted it to his face and smiled.
"What's so funny?" Hona said.
"We're being ambushed," he replied.
There was a tink-tink-tink sound as something bounced towards them. It was a multiburst grenade, set to kinetic. As all but Nale started to turn and run, it exploded, and the shockwave threw them unconscious onto the floor.
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This is the tenth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Pushing Towards Bliss". The next instalment is "A Pleasant Surprise "
The infrastructure was looking shaky, but the hidden patterns told Shiqra he was safe, and he was sure they could get to a few more people before risking collapse. He'd been leading his team deeper into the bowels of the asteroid colony, finding survivors, tagging and prepping them for assistance, and verifying structure integrity so that the rescue squads could move in.
Shiqra was leader of a Sisters of EVE scout team. They ran in first, moved fast, found the victims who needed help, and moved on. Most of their equipment, which was kept as light as possible, consisted of structural and explosive gear. They had scanners, too, ones that searched for heat and electric signatures, but these rarely worked all that well in environments that were falling apart.
The path they were on forked into three routes, one of which was open, the other two caved in. Adjusting his ocular scanning, Shiqra saw high heat beyond the closed entrances. There would be blazing fires on the other side, which wouldn't threaten the Sisters but did block out any chance of automatic life detection.
Shiqra stood there for a moment, regarding the three routes. Long waits were not an option; life would be running out for whoever was trapped in the mines. He picked the leftmost path, one of the caved-in ones, and signaled to his teammates to hole it through. They all wore fire- and shock-resistant suits with full-head facial masks that were outfitted with air filters, night-vision specs and inbuilt voice transmitters, though the transmitters were rarely active. They were easy to use, but the team had long since gotten into the habit of nonverbal communication. Words were a waste, down in the darkness. Words were empty when you were cradling the dead.
His team, which was unquestioning in their obedience, immediately set up a Spoke bomb. Spokes were supercompressed constructs of interconnected tritanium pins encased in an isolated chamber, with a small discharger set at their center. When a Spoke ruptured and the tritanium came into contact with air, it would expand violently, blowing away anything in its immediate vicinity. The tritanium spokes would click into place and form a complex prismic polyhedron, similar to a hubless wheel. The spokes were perfectly balanced, and effectively created a hole in a wall through which a person could pass. It wouldn't be big enough to let through a rescue team laden down with equipment, but then, it didn't need to be. The scout teams only found people; they did not cure them, and the proper rescue teams had their own demolitions gear.
The team passed through the Spoke gap and rushed on. Down holes and chutes they went, Shiqra first, and it was as if he were hunting for ghosts, chasing the steady clockwork rhythm of a heart before it could beat it last. He took each turn with no hesitation, rushing through with complete assurance of motion. He could never tell anyone else this, but he knew his way around by now. He was starting to pick up the patterns.
He found himself distancing from the process, going out of his body as if his corporeal self were controlled by some outside force, and he thought back to the first heavy-carnage missions he'd been on.
He'd done a few regular scouting missions, and loved them, but was still hesitant about the job. He was escaping a bad life of drug use and self-abuse, and had really found himself in the Sisters, but he was always afraid of relapsing, of losing control. If felt like there was something curled up within him, something that he'd never been able to control, and even as he got over the withdrawal effects and experienced the joy of helping people - and the sadness and horror of losing them - this core remained, untouched and waiting.
It wasn't until he went on the first mass-rescue mission, in yet another pirate refinery wrecked by some murderous capsuleer, and came upon the first mass of writhing, screaming humanity trapped within, that he truly felt this core inside of him start to crack open. It was horrifying, so horrifying that his mind left his body and he looked down upon himself as he tagged all those people - putting markers on them that would let the rescue teams find them and prioritize their care - and then kept on going in search for more life. It wasn't until much later that he realized he hadn't disconnected to save his sanity; he had done it because he felt, at last, like he was part of something larger than himself. He was no longer the focus and the center of his own little perceptual world, and that little core inside of him, that compressed ball of potential, began to respond to this new widening of the world. It started to unfurl, to stretch out.
Back in the present, Shiqra found himself at another passage. They'd passed a couple more people, tagging them as they went along, and were now at the entrance to the mine's deep, less traveled sections. The rock here was too thick for any signals to pass through, so they'd have to go entirely on instinct, and without any communication. There were several possible ways they could go, and Shiqra immediately split the team up into pairs of scouts, directing each pair towards a particular entrance. One of his team members, possibly nervous about going dark and losing all chance of communication, spoke out loud to Shiqra and commented with far too much cheer how he always seemed to know where to go, to direct them so they didn't end up under the falling girder or the exploding vat of acid, or whatever. His voice broke the silence like a shot and made the other team members nervous, but Shiqra laughed, and replied that he'd done a lot of these missions. It was no answer, he knew, but in the suffocating darkness of the mines, it sufficed, and calmed.
The scout pairs went their way; those who were going into open entrances started running, while the ones who needed to clear away rubble readied their Spoke bombs. Shiqra watched while his team trickled away. It was policy to travel in teams, but his status as team leader, and his renown as one of the Sisters' best scouts, was sufficient that he could travel all alone. His reasoning was that when he found a trail he would travel so fast that others had problems keeping up with him; and his team, which had worked with him for a while, uniformly agreed.
After he'd seen off the last of his teammates, he set off a Spoke on a remaining passage he'd indicated he would explore. He waited until he was sure that everyone else was out of earshot, then ran back up the passage they'd come, until he reached a side tunnel that they'd missed. It was hard to spot; the entrance was in a dark part of the mine that even their night-vision didn't cover well, and it hadn't been shored up properly, so it looked like a bountiless cul-de-sac full of rubble.
Shiqra knew better. He'd seen the signs.
He used free-form explosives to clear off some of the rubble, then a Spoke to make a hole through which he could crawl. When he was through, he disabled the Spoke's safety and deactivated it. Rubble fell back into the hole, and it looked as if it had never been there.
Shiqra descended.
As he'd done more missions, he'd felt a growing need to partake in the bloody ones, the missions where participating rescuer workers usually got put on leave for a few days after completing. That feeling of being a part of something greater, of being nonindividual and yet being important, was constantly on his mind.
And eventually, he began to see the signs. The other pieces of the mosaic. The other strokes of the brush.
That thing which was curled up inside him, that core no one could see, was the dawning understanding that someone was behind this. Someone had created these situations and was using them to make a kind of living - and dying - work of art, and in Shiqra's attraction to them he had become an element of the masterpiece.
It was entirely possible that he had gone mad, of course. He didn't doubt that. But he also didn't doubt his feelings, and he listened to them. Other team members often spoke about numbing yourself to experience, but that kind of attitude was anathema to him. He wanted to feel it all. And by and by, he started to find the patterns.
He began to exhibit an amazing ability to find living survivors where local interference meant scanning equipment couldn't detect any. But he knew he was simply being led there, and being tested. At every turn there would be an omen. Sometimes it would be obvious to him, though nobody else would notice: an oddly broken rock lying among the rest, a tatter of clothing hanging from an inconspicuous part in the ceiling, or some barely noticeable spatter of blood on a nearly hidden surface, all of which were out of place. He never mentioned these signs, but merely followed them. As he progressed, they started disappearing, replaced with the far more potent absence of anything important at all. The silence and emptiness in certain paths told him just as much as the noise and the visuals had done before. They spoke of unfulfilled potential; something could have been here, they said, and as it wasn't, he should investigate further.
There was something responsible for these catastrophes, Shiqra decided, a pattern to the blood and fire, and it was leading him on.
It happened only sporadically. Not every rescue mission he took brought him closer to transcendence. But he learned to recognize the ones that would, such as when they occurred and under what circumstances, and managed to find more and more. And every time, he progressed deeper, and his core stretched out and began to fill his body with truth and art.
He was going down the hole now, being led through dark places, following the patterns. Sometimes he'd see a hint, sometimes he wouldn't. This was initiation as much as invitation.
And at last he came to another pile of rubble that clearly was empty and devoid of any kind of interest. The absence of life was all the invitation he needed. He detonated a Spoke, opened a hole to the other side, and crawled through.
He made his way into a large, circular room that was a testament, a living altar. Bodies were strewn about, shredded and burned, and the few who seemed still alive were barely so. There was mining equipment here, and it had been put to use.
And in the middle of the room, sitting on top of a pile of equipment as if he were an emperor on his throne, sat a man who he'd later know as Yorlas, holding a massive rifle called a veinshredder.
Yorlas, who was apparently quite comfortable where he was, leant even further back and watched Shiqra with languid eyes. Then he raised the veinshredder, pointed it in Shiqra's direction, and fired.
In that split second, Shiqra's instinctive reaction was not to dodge the shot or move from its trajectory, but to stand still and accept it. It took his body a moment to realize that nothing had yet torn through his body, and he was truly surprised, not merely instinctively but intellectually, at not having been shot. He realized that he had accepted the firing, almost as a rebirth, and that this man, who he knew without doubt was the one responsible for this catastrophe and so many others, was the artist whose red, red paint had covered Shiqra's canvas core.
Shiqra then realized that something else had been shot, and that whatever it was, it was thrashing about behind him, making horrible screeching sounds. He didn't look back. What mattered was in front of him: The artist, and the masterwork, and, approaching them with equal trepidation and joy, their supplicant.
With the barrel of his massive gun, Yorlas pointed towards a glinting patch on the floor. A knife lay there. "Take it," Yorlas said, "And kill yourself."
Shiqra hesitated, not out of unwillingness but simply surprise at the request. He walked over to the knife, hefted it, gently tested its edge. It was sharp, and he knew that once he turned on its diathermic field, it would slide in without any resistance.
He didn't want to do his. He wanted to live. Of course he wanted to live. But that was not what this was about. He was not the artist, and it was not his to decide what his own fate would be. He was the brush with which the work was painted, and the canvas that gratefully accepted its art. Tools could not disobey their masters. He felt a budding kind of pride, because he realized he was being reminded of his place, and while he still felt that he could be of use, he didn't question the art. He knew he would serve a purpose that reached far beyond himself.
Yorlas put the veinshredder aside, laced his fingers together under his chin, and watched Shiqra intently.
Shiqra pointed the knife against himself and was about to plunge it in when Yorlas yelled, "Stop!"
In the silence, there was nothing but the silent breathing of the walls, the condensation drops falling on blackened rock, and the cough and gurgle of the life that lay around them, passing away.
Yorlas said, "Change of plan," and nodded his head towards an inert form that lay in a corner. It was a person who was barely moving, having been cut and beaten quite badly. It was a woman's form, in torn miner's clothing. She was thin and apart from her injuries did not look very old or worn; she couldn't have been working in the mines for more than a year. She had long, white, curly hair. Possibly she had been an overseer, or one of the engineers making an inspection.
And without hesitation, but without any hurry, Shiqra, still holding the knife, went over to her, took hold of her hair and rolled her over so that her neck was exposed. His grip on her hair was firm, lest she struggle, but there was no need for it; her eyes rolled around in their sockets to catch a glimpse of him, but otherwise she was completely docile. Shiqra crouched, and slowly sunk the knife in her throat.
She made coughing motions, but otherwise did not move, and Shiqra idly wondered what the artist had done to her to procure this kind of serenity. They must have been here a while. He knew she was dying now, but it felt like something more was expected of him. He repositioned her and cupped his hands under the bloodflow. After he had a full hand, he began to walk the room, sprinkling and smearing the blood on the walls like the apprentice painter imitating a master artist.
He did this until the blood ran dry. Yorlas didn't speak much during the entire process, but then, he didn't need to. His actions had set the stage, and Shiqra was merely signing the work in his name.
And when it was over, and the sacrifice done, Shiqra stood with his eyes closed, and felt that unfurling core reach out to its full length, the canvas stretching itself taut, until he had lost almost the final vestige of whatever had held him back.
But something remained. There was a purpose for him here, something that would keep him going forever, the brush in the artist's hand, but he had to know one thing. The last doubt, rubbed away.
"How did you know I would kill myself?" he asked Yorlas.
"Why do you need to know?" Yorlas asked in return, with unhidden amusement in his voice.
"I've done everything else. I am someone else. The one I was always meant to be, I think. But still ... how did you know?"
Yorlas leaned forward and, in three short words, completed the change, and stretched the canvas to its full and unyielding size.
"You were smiling," he said.
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This is the ninth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Hyperconsciousness". The next instalment is "The Canvas".
"How're you feeling?" Hona asked. She had just entered Nale's cabin, and was sitting alongside him on the bunk."
Nale rubbed his temples. "Feeling fine."
"You don't look it."
"A lot of things have changed. It's tiring."
She turned to him. "I'm not blaming you, you know."
"I know."
"About my entire crew being turned to vegetables."
"I know."
"I should be, but they knew the risk, same as me. All that matters now is to stop her."
"Yeah."
"But I still want to know-"
"Because I didn't realize her people would be immune, too. If I had, I'd never have let you or your team board that ship. I didn't imagine in a million years they would set off the Book. I thought they were thugs." He ran a hand through his greasy hair.
"Guilt?" she asked, before regretting it.
"Tired," he simply said.
"Could you tell-"
"It's made by the Jove. They wanted to counteract the Jovian Disease, that immense sadness which kills them. But it didn't help, and all it did was brainwash people. At lower levels you'll be left happy, calm and without much drive to do any harm. Higher levels, well, you've seen those."
"Can-"
"Yes."
She got angry at that. "Cut that out. How do you even know what I was going to say?"
He looked at her with eyes that were far too much at ease. "I can."
"Oh really? Can you see what I'm thinking, too?"
"Yes."
"Fine. Fine, mister psychic. What number am I thinking of?"
"Two."
She stared at him.
"It's in your eyes, and the way you sit," he said. "I can see everything now. Everything."
She kept staring at him. "That machine changed you."
"Yes."
"The others, too?"
"No, just me. At least on my own team."
"Why you?"
He sighed and looked up at the ceiling. "My trainers would probably say I showed immense aptitude. I beat everyone else in the tests they laid for us. I'm a bit of a prodigy, it turns out. But that's not it."
"Then what is it?"
"I'm dying."
Her jaw dropped. She started to say something, but he interrupted.
"Don't. Please. It's chronic, but causes no pain or discomfort. One day my brain will simply tell my body to stop. It's a condition far older than this mission of ours, and it should've killed me ages ago, since exertion is known to bring it on, but apparently I'm tougher than I thought." He inspected his nails, searching for the words. "Anyway, ever since I found out I was going to die, I saw things in a different light. It's weird, really. I sat in a small room, listening to a voice tell me I was a dead man, and it felt like I was the only thing in this world left untouched. Yes, I was the one who changed, I was the one who found out that my own personal sphere of existence had been irrevocably altered. But I was still the same person, or at least I felt like I was. The world itself, everything that is not me, that's what changed."
"Or your perception of it."
"Precisely. And I can't tell you how liberating it was. All those old worries of the world, they vanished. The rules had changed, altered, gone even. Ever since I got the diagnosis I could feel my mind casting off its weights. But even so, something remained. It's like being told the answer to a puzzle, but not having figured it out yourself. You can see why it is the way it is, but you can't intuitively understand it, and thus it feels like you haven't got the answer at all."
"I know what you mean," she said.
"And then, as luck would have it, the Sisters swooped in and carried me away. And for a while, it helped, but it still wasn't enough. It gave me purpose, gave me an answer, but I still hadn't figured out the question." He got up, picked up a backpack and said, "Let's go for a walk."
They left his quarters and headed towards the cargo bays.
"You're different," she said, in the tone of one who's earned the right to say a thing like that.
"Yes. It's the Book."
"How did the Book change things?" she asked.
"It opened my eyes to the larger picture. It explained the answer and the question, at long last. Even after joining the Sisters I'd still been playing the same game, with all the same worries and doubts, right until the encounter on that ship. You can't do that and honestly expect to make a change. What happened showed me that people can be freed from fears and terrors. They can be made to understand everything."
She furrowed her brow, then asked him, "You're not seriously suggesting what I think you are?"
"Well, I can't rightly free someone the same way that it happened to me, through a chronic illness leading to death. That would be a horrible thing to do. So we can use the Book instead."
"That is horrible."
"It's what my people were planning to do all along. I just didn't realize it until I thought the whole thing through. You're a captain, you've been in your share of fights. Have you never had a moment where you wished you could make everyone stop? Where you were so utterly tired of wading through blood that you wanted to grab the world by the throat and scream in its face?"
"Of course I have. So you want to lobotomize them?"
"No. At lower levels the machine simply erases warlike thoughts. There's probably a subsection of the human race it won't affect - the people we're after are apparently immune, for instance - but for most people, they'll be granted peace and serenity. They'll be a little sluggish, I'm sure, but they won't be killing one another, or suffering the same endless doubts that I did."
"Do you even have approval for this?"
"It is right. I need no more approval."
"Nale, you're talking about taking away people's will, and their freedom of thought."
They rounded a corridor, and walked down a metal stairway. Their feet clanged on the steps.
"Let me ask you a question," Nale said. "Why are you a captain?"
"What do you mean? It's what I do."
"Great, that's how it should be. Why?"
"Because. Because I want to do my part in protecting the Cartel. And because I'm good at it."
"Do you like doing things you're good at?"
"Of course."
"And do you like doing your part for something you believe in?"
"So long as my conscience can live with it, yes. And before you say a word, I may not always be perfectly happy with the way the Angels run things, but it doesn't compare to what you're planning."
"Never said it did. Why do you like doing those things?"
"What do you mean, why?"
"It's your life's work. It's what you spend most of your day engaged in. Why?"
"I don't know. Because it gives me satisfaction, I suppose. I'm part of something, and I get to do it well."
"Why?"
"Look, is there a point to this?"
"Absolutely. Keep answering the questions. Why do you want to be part of something and do your part well?"
"Same reason everyone would, I guess. To feel my life has a purpose."
"And if you feel your life has a purpose, what does that do for you?"
"It makes me happy."
"Precisely," Nale said and gave her a frightening smile. "Anything you do, any purpose of your life, it'll eventually boil down to happiness. That's all we want; that's all everyone wants. The way we tear each other apart every day is borne only out of frustration that we cannot find the happiness we seek."
"Funny, I thought it was a bit more complicated than that."
"It is if you let it. Most people don't truly think about why they do what they do, no matter whether it's drinking a bottle of Quafe or putting a bullet into someone's head. But you take almost anyone in this world and ask them why, believe me, it'll boil down to happiness in the end."
"You know, even if you were right, there are other ways to achieve this. People don't need to be brainwashed. You could simply encourage them to seek their own paths."
"Most people are self-destructive, and unreliable even toward themselves. As a rule, they don't put much effort into their search for happiness, and no amount of positive encouragement is going to change that. Why do you think holoreels are as popular as they are, and meditation isn't?"
They came to a door. Nale took off his backpack.
"Still," Hona said, "You could do it differently. You don't have to push people towards bliss. You can encourage them to seek it themselves."
"I'm not going to stand there, like a mad prophet, constantly harping on other people to go after their true purpose in life. All I'm going to do is eliminate the roadblocks."
Hona stepped in his way, and looked him straight in the eye. "Don't do this, Nale. Don't. If you even manage to regain the Book, you've no guarantee it'll work like you think, and even if it does, you'll be taking away people's basic rights. You'll be no better than the capsuleer who ruined our mining colony. And besides, how on earth will you achieve any change? What if the effect is only temporary?"
"Then we will use it on the right people first; the ones who determine the lives of others. Everyone at the top of the social stratus. Leaders, and dictators, and every capsuleer we can get to. After that, we will find ways of duplicating the Book, and we'll start to spread its word to the masses."
She goggled at him. "You're talking about a revolution here. You're going to be violating people's basic rights on a fundamental scale."
"The fundamental right of man is to be happy," he said to her. "You'll see. This is right. It's the only thing that makes sense."
He went around her, opened the door and stepped into the empty storage room beyond. He removed something from the bag, then dropped it outside the open door.
Hona looked at what he was carrying: Four inertial balls. She gave him a puzzled look.
"I've modified them slightly," he said. "Removed the acceleration inhibitors."
"Are you trying to die?"
"I'm trying to see if I'm worthy of the task I've undertaken."
"How will you even know, apart from not ending up a bloody mess?"
"I'll hear it on Black Mountain."
She hesitated at that, unsure of what to say, and he turned away from her, whirling the inertial balls in his hands. There was a soft sound and a click, as of a gun being drawn and cocked.
Nale did not look back. "Now or never," he said, and after a moment he heard the door close behind him.
He smiled, and closed his eyes. The spirits moved around him, their hazy shadows enveloping him. Their whispers told him the truths.
He threw one ball. It bounced off the floor and sped up; bounced off the wall and sped up; bounced off the ceiling and sped up. Soon it was a blur, zooming through the room at bone-breaking speed with a cacophony of gongs as it bounced off the walls. Nale listened closely, and every time, stood where the soaring missile didn't go.
He threw the others, moving lithely from place to place as they bounced around him, his eyes opening and closing in tune to the blinking lights on the tree that still reached for him. He avoided its grasp, and he avoided the soft, soft rocks that bounced around, beckoning to him to hold them, to let them touch him.
They went faster and faster, until the entire room was covered in hazy, half-seen trajectories, the rocks tearing their way through the empty air. And still he dodged them, at a speed unimaginable, as they roared through the rapidly heating air, their hisses melding with that from the frustrated tree of kingdoms. The spirits guided him, and slowly the floor disappeared, until he was floating above the tarry sea of the shadowy angels and shared unconscious, seeing everything, knowing everything, in tune with the world, on this path that led inexorably to freedom.
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This is the eight instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Some Dying Angel". The next instalment is "Pushing Towards Bliss".
Despite its attempts in recent times to project the image of a network of high-class academic establishments for New Eden's elite, the Society of Conscious Thought remains first and foremost a research institute with a vigorous interest in the technical advancement of society. This is no secret; after all, the Jove are an inquisitive lot, and in the protective isolation of the Society's enclaves, called kitzes, there's no telling what new developments may be brewing.
That's not to say the Society has had free rein in their choice of projects. A checkered past, which includes political machinations and some rather dubious human experimentation, nearly spelled the Society's end. A turning point came when an internal investigation brought to light their association with Sansha's Nation. It was common knowledge that Sansha Kuvakei combined Jovian capsule technology with illegally modified brain implants in order to start off his notorious army of sycophants, but Empire attempts to replicate his research have always been unsuccessful, and it had long been postulated that the Jovians may have been one of the shadowy forces who secretly supported Kuvakei, supplying him with clandestine technologies in order to see what he could make of it. This was part and parcel with the Society's brash approach to technological advancement, and after an investigation revealed discrepancies in the research logs of certain kitzes that seemed to implicate them as having worked with the Sansha, the Society's funding, power and autonomy were severely curtailed, and the kitzes themselves vanished without a trace. It is, of course, not known whether the retributive actions against the kitzes truly were imparted for their corroboration with the Sansha or merely for their inability to properly hide it.
While information on the development of any part of Jovian society remains scarce, it is at any rate clear that the other sections of the Society took this development to heart and greatly shifted their focus, eventually even opening their gates to non-Jovians in an attempt to dispel at least some of the dark mystique that had begun to envelop their organization. Aside from this paradigm change from investigation to instruction, the Society also made a subtler shift in their research focus. Jovian inspectors found that while the Society dutifully abstained from resuming its prior level of hard-science technological research, the kitz governors, along with Societal scholars, simply started looking into soft-sciences instead. They focused extensively on the humanities, in particular sociology, education, theology and psychology.
This development received tacit approval from the inspectors and was allowed to continue uninterrupted for quite some time. In their wisdom, the inspectors recognized that the Jovian nature of endless tinkering could not be suppressed, lest it move out of the inspectors' reach and back into darker channels, and while there remained some technological hard-science aspects to the Society's new research methods, they were considered to be harmless. In particular, scholars had been tinkering with electronic mood enhancers - alpha wave transmitters and suchlike - but as the Jovians are very much in favor of anything that might help combat depression and ennui, the experiments were given a blind eye.
Many of these research projects started out as unofficial experiments among Society scholars, who kept them secret for about as long as any scholar will keep secret the results of his tests. They soon developed into an organization of work among various kitzes, and thanks to the excellent communication the Society kept up among its enclaves, some interesting projects soon saw the light of day. One of those was the fabled Hyperconsciousness agenda.
Certain scholars had noticed an emergence of new patterns in the relation between the training they gave their students and the results those students showed. As had been long established, while one could set down a baseline for a proper lower-level education - a focus on maths, languages and social studies would always be necessary - any higher degree of education would always depend as much on the individual student as it did on the curriculum. Members of the Society found that it was, in fact, possible to identify certain patterns in the early academic development of each individual student and then use those patterns to tailor the education to the student rather than the other way around. The exact nature of these patterns remains jealously guarded by the Society, but from the results it has produced in the last few decades, the method clearly works.
And if it had stopped there, the Society would still be on its merry way to being considered a slightly unorthodox but very much an ivy-league educational establishment.
The pattern detection they used for analyzing student abilities got better and better, to the point where they found they could map out various other aspects of a student's abilities and tendencies. And somewhere along the line, some enterprising scholar decided that training the students to be better persons wasn't enough. They should also have some of their detrimental tendencies curbed.
In itself, this aim was nothing new. Part of the raison d'étre for any educational establishment is to even out the rougher edges of its students, not merely setting them on the right path but keeping them from straying. Society scholars argued that the old, established ways to do this were outdated and generic, and likely to backfire. Instead, they advocated a student-tailored approach, whereby one individual might be given physical tasks to resolve, another might have his academic liberties curtailed, and yet another might be given a stern talking to on certain specific points likely to hit home. Nothing harmful, and nothing excessive.
The trouble started when they began combining this pattern work with advances in their mood enhancers. Certain scholars argued that instead of dealing with the outcome of negative, hostile and aggressive behavior, it would be easier and more effective to eradicate the problem at its source. Not only that, but in using these mood enhancers they might actually help their students reach heretofore unscaled heights, complementing their already natural abilities with more positive attitudes.
This kind of project would have been seen as brainwashing in any other circles, and reportedly made even certain Society scholars uncomfortable, but Jovian inquisitiveness prevailed. Nonetheless, the Society was careful to keep its true agenda secret, weaving its patterns into the tapestry of its curricula and thus keeping them hidden from casual onlookers. The codeword for this agenda was Hyperconsciousness.
Hyperconsciousness, or HyCon as it became known among insiders, produced a great many students whose academic careers were imbued with excellence. It also produced further improvement in the HyCon's theoretical basis, as the Society constantly improved its methods and technology based not only on the results of its living experiment, but on additional technology supplied by Jovian benefactors who were impressed with the Society's academic achievements while remaining entirely in the dark about the truth of the Hyperconsciousness agenda. A major windfall came when some mysterious benefactor bestowed on a select Society kitz the responsibility of destroying the Book of Emptiness.
The Book was well-known among the Jove. It was yet another failed attempt to curtail the Jovian Disease, that scourge of humanity which still reduces many of their number to broken, darkened shells and eventually drives them to death. The Book, named after a fabled Amarrian holy text that supposedly brought its readers to a higher plane of consciousness and serenity, was a small, unobtrusive machine that, when activated, would remove negative thoughts and emotions from anyone in the vicinity. The Jovians had hoped the Book would at the very least cure them of melancholy, and in a way it did, but not before it turned its subjects into drooling idiots. At lower levels the effect was not permanent but did have the effect of strongly affecting the subject's personality to the point where they lost their ability for purely logical thought; at higher levels the subject would be rendered permanently catatonic. Needless to say, the Book was deactivated, dismantled and consigned to the dustbin of scientific history.
Or so the Jovians thought. Under the auspices that only the Society, with its experience in behavioral patterns, could be trusted to handle and destroy such a device, one of the Book's caretakers gave its parts to them upon their request, with the intention that a few be put on display or under examination, and the rest destroyed. It is a measure of the immense trust the Society had rebuilt at that time, and probably of their image as slightly doddering but well-meaning and intelligent people, that they were given this chance, and nobody seemed to realize it was like throwing meat to a Slaver. The person who supplied the Society with the Book's collective parts undoubtedly did so knowing that they would first inspect it for its secrets, but it's doubtful even he realized that they had the ability and the theoretical knowledge to reassemble it.
The Society took its time, and even put a few duplicate parts on display to reassure its trustees that the rest had been destroyed. It never quite managed to recreate an original, fully functioning unit, but its experiments were successful enough that a simulacrum of sorts eventually emerged. This new Book, whose existence was kept a closely guarded secret, had the same basic abilities as the old unit but mainly affected non-Jovians, and of those it couldn't even be made to work properly on the worst (or, in one regrettable mistake during an illicit test run by very frustrated researchers, the best) students of HyCon.
Some valuable bits of technology did emerge from studies. One was the Oblivion Cocktail, a group of nanobots whose ingestion made the subject highly vulnerable to effects of both the Book and, as it turned out, some of HyCon's own corrective measures. Another was an amnesiac agent that, while completely ineffective as far as a subject's mood went, would completely remove their memories over a specified length of time and force their brains to compensate by inventing a hazy and completely inconspicuous gap in their memories, although anything more than a couple days' worth of amnesia would likely require hospitalization and some degree of rehabilitation. The amnesiac agent proved extremely helpful under circumstances where people had suffered great mental trauma or stress, and was later put to use by various psychological institutions, but there have also been rumors that it has been used for darker means, up to and including assassinations in the midst of crowds.
Despite these gains the project was considered a failure, and the Book was put in deep storage pending further secret study. There it sat, supposedly untouched and gathering dust, and would have been resigned to forgotten academia and pernicious rust had its caretakers not begun to hear that the Book had been sighted elsewhere in space. Lo and behold, they found that their own unit had disappeared.
They kept out probes for the Book, but to no avail. Thankfully, while the Empires had long since heard the stories of the Book's existence and potential power, word of its availability did not get out. As a result, the Society had time to recruit and train special task forces, staffing them with individuals who had a natural immunity to the Book's effects, and keeping them on standby while hunting down clues as to the Book's location. It was a tough task, as it had to be kept secret, but the kitzes' isolation came to good use. Several offered their services as training grounds and ended up breeding some very effective and quite intimidating groups of HyCon ops, many of whom never knew who they were working for.
Their progress is documented elsewhere. The Society continues to operate, and its HyCon agenda is still very much a part of their methodology, though in a form far removed from its original version. Society scholars have gone on record stating that while they feel the Book's prolonged storage in Society kitzes certainly was a mistake, this little misstep should not reflect badly on HyCon nor on the Society's contributions to education in New Eden. It is certain that in specific circles the Book debacle has reawoken suspicion that the Society may be hatching new plans of political dominance, but the enormity of its efforts to retrieve the Book has gone a great way towards assuaging those doubts.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the Book's disappearance was no accident. Cynics might claim that the Society was beginning to worry that its Hyperconsciousness agenda, and the careful manner in which it had educated and molded its wealthy and powerful non-Jovian students, might be seen as the starting moves in a new political game of strategy, and that the hunt for the Book was meant to serve only as a decoy. If so, it was an incredibly dangerous move, and likely made with the arrogance of superiority. It could very well be that the Society never expected that any other force in EVE might find out so quickly about the Book's existence and start its own hunt for the item.
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This is the seventh instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "A Man of Peace". The next instalment is "Hyperconsciousness".
Nale and Hona were sitting side by side on their ship's bridge, each listening in on the broadcasts from the Angel ship they were tracking.
It was the usual external stuff about docking plans and routes, along with internal notes concerning commands and confirmations of commands. They were doing it in shifts, each crew member on Hona's ship listening to the individual channel of his corresponding member on the Angel ship. Hona had twice already predicted, erroneously, that Draea's ship was about to attack the bait, and everyone was rather tired of waiting, herself foremost. She had used executive privilege to wiretap the Angel ship without its knowledge, and would have to answer for it later.
There was a buzz, and one of Hona's crew said, "Wait, they're being hailed. And ... wow. Locked, webbed and scrambled." Immediately a lot of Hona's crew raised their hands, in quiet acknowledgment that their own channels had filled with related data.
"Alright, let's get moving," Hona said. "While they're bargaining, we'll-"
"Captain, they're boarding!" someone said.
"What?!"
"Enemy team's already attached to ship. They're boarding now."
"Get us there right now and ready for boarding," Hona said in a fast and clear voice. "Team assemble in dock area, now. That includes your people, Nale, in case we need medics."
As the personnel put the ship on autocontrol and rushed out with her, Nale and his team followed. "What's going to happen?" he asked on the way.
"Idiots decided to board the Angel ship instead of bargaining with them for releasing your precious cargo. Which means that people are going to die, on both sides. It's stupid and reckless, and I can't imagine what type of person would take it this far."
"The type that stalks my teammates and fires veinshredders into their throats?" Nale said darkly.
Hona glanced at him but didn't comment. She turned to someone else who had a wireplug in his ear and asked, "Time to board and status on vessel?"
"One minute hard, two on soft, two-four-zero on dark," he replied, "and our people are getting torn to shit. Ma'am."
"We'll board dark, then."
"Ma'am?"
"Angel crew's been on recon missions that included contact. They're close-combat trained. If they're losing, it means we need a different tactic."
"And if the attacking crew didn't all breach, ma'am? What if we're spotted by someone aboard the enemy vessel?"
"If these psychopaths decided to board an Angel ship and have a shootout, I don't imagine any one of them wanted to hang back and look out the windows. Get in gear, we're sneaking in."
They poured into the Angel ship, Hona's men and Nale's team. Monitors inset in the boarding corridor showed their destination, hovering still in space, the red light from the sun glinting off its carapace. It seemed dead to Nale, and in a small way helped him get ready for what he'd see on the inside.
The situation was nothing new to the Sisters, who were used to working as medics in hostile grounds, but they still found themselves in an awed silence of horror when they boarded the vessel. Draea's team had reveled in death. There was blood and viscera everywhere; walls were spattered with vermilion sprays, and corridors were covered in what had once been parts of human beings. Where Nale walked, his boots stuck to the floor.
They made their way through the ship, following the trail of blood. Back in basic training the Sisters had offered lessons in army lingo and signage, and Nale, hungry to master everything on offer, had taken to it. When Hona's team communicator whispered coded status commands, Nale understood him.
General fighting. Local team retreating. Hona shared a look with her team member. Draea's forces weren't going for their prize right away; they were exterminating the ship's crew. She whispered back to him. Cargo bay. Setup.
They took up places in the cargo bay, which on this industrial was thankfully large enough to easily accommodate their teams. Nale estimated that Hona's crew outnumbered the assailants three to one, and his own men - outfitted as they were now with the minimum of armor and weaponry - added a few to the mix. He did not feel very hopeful about the entire situation, but at least he took comfort from the thought that only he and his team knew the full, true nature of the machine. If his enemies did anything with it, he and the rest of the Sisters should be the only ones left standing.
It really wasn't much of a comfort, come to that. Especially with Hona around. Nale really did not want to see her get hurt, and it shamed him that right now he apparently cared more about than about Berkhes's death. Still, it was Sister credo: The living before the dead.
Nale surveyed his team. Everyone was holding steady, in alcoves and behind obstacles that would hide them from view. He moved silently between his men, giving them encouragements and ensuring they were keeping their nerve. The only one who startled when Nale walked up to him was Shiqra, who surreptitiously grabbed at one of the pockets on his combat suit. Nale asked him if everything was all right, to which he assented.
After getting back to Hona, he asked her, "Think one of your men can do me a favor?"
"Depends," she said, then added in a more pleasant tone, "But I'm sure we can try."
"One of my men is holding something I don't think he should be. Right-hand pocket, on the thigh. I've no idea what it is, but I have a feeling he's going to do something stupid, and I don't want a confrontation right now. One of your soldiers is located next to him, and I want him to keep an eye on my man. If he makes a move, opens his pocket or whatever, restrain him."
"You got it," Hona said. "I've no more patience for rogue agents than you do."
"Thanks," Nale said, and gave her a smile that she returned.
It wasn't long before Draea's people entered the bay, stalking in as if they owned the place. There were four of them, and Nale, hiding with Hona behind a crate, marveled sickly at how they'd been able to take down an entire crew of Angels, even if the poor soldiers had been completely unprepared.
Draea went over to a particular box without hesitation. Nale surmised she had pulled its location from some dying Angel.
The box was situated on a low shelf, and Draea pulled it out and placed on the floor with apparent ease. It was under electronic lock, which she fixed by placing the barrel of her gun alongside the mechanism and shooting it off. Gunfire wouldn't harm this ship; like so many others it was just as well-protected from the inside as from the outside.
Draea reached in and, with a grunt, lifted out the Book of Emptiness and placed it on the floor, where she regarded it for a few breaths. After it did not turn on, glow, smoke or explode, her three teammates visibly relaxed. They walked in closer and gave the machine a look.
It really was inconsequential in appearance. Only a few oddly curved lines here and there, and the strange way in which it caught the light, gave the faintest idea that it might be more than a glorified Quafe vendor.
"Heavy, is it?" one of Draea's people asked.
"Wouldn't want to carry it far," she said.
It was at that moment Hona gave the signal to her men, who broke cover, rising and aiming their weapons at Draea's team. "Move and die," Hona said.
To their credit, none of Draea's teammates twitched. They slowly looked in Hona's direction, and Nale, who had gotten up and was standing next to her, felt uncomfortably like he was watching a pack of animals deciding on their prey.
"Drop your weapons and step away from them," Hona said.
Draea and her team mates looked at one another, then shrugged and dropped their guns, though none of them moved nor raised their hands. "What are you planning?" Draea said, coolly.
"Taking you back in for questioning," Hona replied. "Nobody needs to get hurt."
Which was a complete and utter lie, Nale knew. She was planning to kill everyone on Draea's team. But she apparently didn't want to risk the Book, which he knew said more about her interest in him right now than it did about the machine. He felt a small wave of gratitude that was immediately washed out when he noticed what Draea was still holding, palmed in her hand. It was a catalyst. And her thumb was gently turning its sphere.
Time crystallized, and two truths materialized in Nale's mind. The first was that Draea's team, for whatever ungodly reason, was likely immune to the machine, which contradicted everything they'd been told so far. The second was that Draea was about to turn the blasted thing on, the effects of which would be completely unpredictable except for the very real and definite mind-death it would likely have for all of Hona's crew and for Hona herself.
In a moment he would later not know whether to rejoice in or regret, he turned to Hona, said, "I'm sorry," and, to her brief surprise, hit her square on the jaw. She crumpled to the floor, and Nale barely had time to turn back as he saw someone in Draea's team plunge something into his own neck, while Draea grinned and clicked the catalyst.
There was an infinite whiteness.
***
Nale is walking through a desert. It is night-time but he doesn't feel cold. There are other people here, he thinks; they're almost visible, like shadows detached from the earth, milling about in every direction.
He comes to a leafless tree whose limbs extend like the entirety of space, their buds glowing blue and red. A wind whispers through the branches, gently hissing his true name. He keeps walking, the tree bending to stretch its branches in his direction.
He comes upon an entry to a small quarry, the ground before its dark opening surrounded with rounded, polished rocks. He picks up a rock and it turns soft in his hands. He drops it again and walks onward.
The desert ends, and turns to black basalt. He keeps walking.
The further he goes, the clearer his path becomes. His doubts begin to melt away. He is here. Of course he is here. He has always been here.
He comes to a cliff face, and he sees a dark ocean below, its seas black as the earth.
Around him the spirits flow over the cliffs and plunge into the ocean, joining its waves. He wonders if he should turn back, but he knows that even if he tried, the onrush of spirits would turn against him and push him off. This is his path. This has always been his path.
He stands there, looking into the abyss.
For a moment he is filled with fear, uncertainty and loneliness, the last vestiges of his past existence. But they fade away like the other shadowy spirits, passing out of him, never to return. He knows what he is and what he wants, what he has always wanted.
He steels himself, and he takes a deep breath, and he jumps. And as he falls he turns in the air, looks up and sees Draea standing at the top of the cliff. She glares down at him, her pale skin standing out among the ethereal shadows that surround her. One of those shadows seemed more substantial than the rest, hovering motionlessly behind Draea while the others float back and forth, but he can't make out what or who it is.
He plunges into the black sea, shattering on impact. There is no pain.
He remains conscious and feels himself be slowly torn to pieces. It eats him up, pulls him apart, disintegrates him.
He's gone. He's void. There is no him any longer; he is of this world but no longer of this world. He is the black sea, and he is the black sky. He is the black sea, and he is the black mountain. He is the black mountain.
The shadows speak to him in a cacophony of voices. He hears them all. They tell their stories, and he understands as one can only understand when one hears all voices and not merely the faint whisper of the one.
Slowly, a new presence begins to rise, and it is him. He parts from the black sea, but he does not part. He leaves the black mountain, but he does not leave. He floats up to the black sky, but he does not need to join it.
He is the black sea below, and the black sky above, and the black mountain which casts its shadows over the world.
He understands everything.
He rises.
***
Everyone was lying on the ground, some moving, some not. Nale hauled himself up and surveyed the scene.
Hona's entire team lay sprawled, their eyes rolled back in their heads, froth on their mouths. Draea's own crew was beginning to stumble around, shaking their heads as if to dislodge cobwebs. Draea herself was now standing, swaying but keeping erect, staring fixedly at Nale with an expression that was half murder and half wonder.
Then at once, the people who were conscious seemed to do a kind of mental shrug, looked in the direction of the machine, and realized that it was no longer there. Neither, for that matter, was Draea's bounty hunter, Yorlas.
Both Nale's people and Draea's remaining crew started to draw their guns, but Draea raised a hand and yelled, "No!" In their daze, the people obeyed her and lowered their weapons.
She rubbed her eyes, grimaced and said, "I really wish it hadn't come to this. Krezek, open comms to our ship and get a speaker going."
There was a crackle, and then Yorlas's voice was omnipresent. "Boom," it said. "Hello, Draea."
"How'd you manage to break out of the fugue so early?" Draea asked.
"Adrenaline shot," Yorlas said.
"Were you working with someone else?"
"Man called Shiqra, on other team."
Nale quickly looked around, and saw that Shiqra was gone. His Angel guardian was lying on the ground, comatose. Beside the angel lay an unused mini-syringe full of a strong soporific. Nale realized Shiqra hadn't been immune to the Book and must've been planning to render himself unconscious, trusting that Yorlas would come to his rescue.
"He's with you, I imagine. Book take him out?" Draea said.
There was a moment's hesitation before Yorlas said, "Yes," and the undertones Nale heard in word encapsulated far more than he would ever be able to put into words.
"And you have the Book, on our ship, currently en route to destination unknown, right?" Draea asked.
"Still in system, but getting ready to leave," Yorlas said with some satisfaction. Piloting ships all alone was difficult; their AIs compensated well, but there were a lot of minute adjustments that needed to be made. "Otherwise, yes."
"Excellent. To sell to the highest bidder, I imagine"
"Yes. Was supposed to be private project of true art, but with Shiqra gone, no point," Yorlas said.
"How sad." Draea said. "By the way, did I tell you I was promoted? Team leader."
"Congratulations. I'm very happy," Yorlas said.
"You should be. They gave me executive privilege." Out of her pocket she pulled a small, circular disc, the one she'd acquired at the Society's direction and activated with their assistance just before they'd set out. "Any last words?"
"What?"
"That'll do." She pressed a button on the disc. There was a squelch from the radio, followed by silence.
"Cranial explosive," she said to the others, who were staring goggle-eyed at her. "They didn't trust us. Good for them. Krezek, get over here, please."
The tech rushed to her, clearly eager to obey.
"Can you disable this ship? We'll take the one from the Sisters to ferry us to our old vessel."
He hesitated, then said, "I can, yes, absolutely, but are you sure it's a good idea?"
"It'll attract less attention. We might get hailed by Angel troops on our way to pick up our old ship and the Book. Besides, we've left this one a little red, and it won't be long until those people start to smell."
He nodded, and walked off, leaving her and Polok in the bay.
She turned and walked up to Nale. "Anyone left on your ship? And by the way, if I see any of you little peacekeepers reach for their guns, Polok here will ventilate you."
Nale shook his head. "We took the entire troop."
Draea walked closer and slowly reached out her hand until it closed on the neckline on Nale's shirt. She grabbed it tight and pulled close, so that she and Nale were standing chest to chest. "If you try to follow us," she said in a low but clear tone, "you do realize what will happen to you."
Nale just smiled, and Draea's face took on something that, in a person not homicidally insane, might be considered simple contentment. And with that, she left, her enforcer following on her heels.
Nale looked at the prone figures around him and said, "Yeah, I guess we'll have a little explaining to do at some point. Zetyn."
The Sisters' own tech guy stepped out from behind a crate. "Yeah?"
"Radio any nearby Sisters teams for help and get them to send a scouter vessel, one with a mechanic onboard. We'll get them to dispose of this while we hunt down the Book."
"To be honest, that ... stinks of a coverup," Zetyn said.
Nale turned to him and in a very relaxed voice asked, "Do you want us to explain to the Angels why we were found sitting in a roomful of their men that have all effectively been lobotomized?"
Zetyn raised his hands in surrender, turned and started prepping his comms equipment.
Monas, another of his team members, walked up to Nale and pointed behind him. Hona was sitting there, propped up against a support girder. She looked vacant, and tired.
"What'll we do with her?" Monas asked, and immediately answered the question himself. "We should leave her."
"No!" she suddenly said, loud and clear. "Hell, no. I'm going where you're going. I'm going to get this damn woman."
Nale turned to Monas. "You heard the lady."
Monas rolled his eyes. "Alright, boss. So how do we find this Draea?"
Nale said, "I've got a feeling," and pulled something out of his pocket. A disc, covered with sockets and wirings, that Draea had dropped there for him to find. A tracking device.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the sixth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Of a Sentence". The next instalment is "Some Dying Angel".
Nale's team was heading towards their ship, collectively wondering what just happened and what to do next, when they were met by Hona and a team of Angels. She stopped them and said, "You're coming with me."
They balked at it, but she said, "We lost the attackers but we know where they're headed, and whatever you people are after, it'll be there, too," and started walking.
They looked at one another, then started to follow her.
On the way, she explained to them, "The second we disengaged, I looked up the station logs. That piece you were inspecting came from a shipment brought in by one of our deep scouting teams, and it's part of a larger find. They were going to offload the entire thing here, but one of our military installations asked them to bring the other items in for closer inspection. They're on their way there now, but they'll be making a few stops on the way, so we can catch up with them if we hurry."
"Look, far be it from me to criticize this plan, and thank you so much for getting us into the merchant's office and out of that shootout at the warehouse," Nale said, "but who are you?"
"I'm the captain of a task force."
"... yes?"
"I'm also the one who can find whatever it is you're looking for, in exchange for some answers."
Nale shrugged, a difficult motion to make when one is walking fast. "All right. Lead on."
***
A while later, they were onboard an Angel ship staffed by Hona's own hand-picked crew and heading towards the unknown.
Hona had told him she'd brought his team onboard for debriefing and to ensure she could keep an eye on him, and she had asked him several questions about the item they were after, expressing her worry that it was a weapon which could be used against her people. Nale had tried to reassure her while fending off the questions the best he could, saying only that it was a specialized type of healing device that only the Sisters could operate properly. Hona had ignored his own questions for the most part, and by the time each realized they weren't going to get what they wanted from the other, the atmosphere between them had grown chilled; Hona was outright angry, Nale merely frustrated and tired. Eventually she'd let it go at that and left him to his own devices.
He'd picked up some equipment from his own ship before leaving and was now playing with it in his new quarters, sitting on his bunk and tossing an inertial ball in the air. Every time he tossed it up it would accelerate and hit the ceiling with a bang, then drop down again into his hand. It reminded him of the training camp, when things had been simpler.
The inertial ball was a metal sphere with a rubbery varnish, of the same type they'd used back at the gym. Its technology was based on the same principle as the inertial modifiers that keep spaceships from tearing themselves apart when they accelerate or decelerate at the incredible speeds they reach. Its insides were composed of gravitronic mechanisms that made the ball, once thrown in a consistent direction, continue to accelerate, so that it would hit its target at a far greater velocity than it started with. Upon impact it would immediately decelerate at a rate dependant on its contact surface; the softer the hit, the harder its internal mechanism would reverse and try to lower its impact, which meant that the few extra milliseconds it took to push into a soft-skinned surface would make for a lesser blow than if it smashed against steel.
Eventually Hona banged on his door, then walked right in. "What on earth are you doing in here?"
"Waiting."
"Well, wait more silently."
He stared at her, getting even grumpier, then made up his mind and got up from his bunk. "Are you busy?"
"I'm making a tour of the ship," she said.
"That's a no, then. Good. You can help me practice."
"What? No. What are you talking about?"
He held the inertial towards her. "Let's go find a corridor with solid-steel backing and you can toss this at me at high speed."
She opened her mouth to say something, stopped short, looked at the ball and then back up at him, smiled an evil smile and said, "All right. Follow me."
They made their way down to the bowels of the ship and found an empty storage corridor with a nice, thick steel wall on one end. They took places on either end of the corridor, Nale right in front of the wall.
"So I just throw this at you?" Hona said.
"Pretty much."
"Any last requests?"
"I'd prefer above-belt aim, but really, it's up to you."
She threw the ball at his head. It accelerated on the way but didn't hit him, and instead clanged off the wall behind him. He picked it up and tossed it to her underarm.
"Does it have any settings?" she asked.
"There's two poles on it, one red, one green. Squeeze the ball twice, then hold down green to slow it down, red to speed it up. Press both simultaneously to turn it off for the space of one throw, hold them both down for a couple seconds and you turn it off altogether."
"Red. Right." She pressed that one a few times, then threw the ball at Nale. It missed him again.
"You know, we really are quite grateful you took us with you," he said as they kept on the exercise.
"Not much choice," she responded.
"Not to question your judgment, but how do you plan to end this?"
"We'll get to the Angel transport ship first, while our real prey flitters around and shakes off imaginary tails. Then we hang back, keep a listen on the transport, and jump in once she attacks it. She wants what's on board, so she won't destroy the ship."
"All right." Nale considered more questions, and could only come up with, "So what's Angel life like?"
"Disciplined."
He picked up the ball from a missed throw and tossed it back to her. "Really? I've met some of you guys and you always seemed more of a family."
She caught the ball, but didn't throw it again. "When did you meet Angels?" she asked.
"There was a massive industrial accident on one of your mining colonies a few months ago. A capsuleer launched missiles at it but thankfully didn't destroy the entire place. My team was doing some unrelated exercise in the area, and we were all called in. Sometimes we're the only ones who can cut through the politics and actually help people."
She sighed and gave a slight nod. "We're not the best-loved of factions."
"You don't say."
The ball whizzed at his groin, but he sidestepped it at the last minute, laughing.
"How many did you save?" she asked.
"Most of them. The missiles mostly blew up silos and processing plants that had already been vacated. But there was one framework collapse in a populated mine that left a lot of people broken or badly cut. We had to pull them out first, which has its own problems, but it all worked out. The only ones we left behind never had a chance. A dozen had been either cut in half or crushed to a pulp by falling girders well before we found their bodies. Hand getting tired?"
She'd been holding the ball in one hand, idly waving it. She switched hands and gave a toss that bounced off a side wall, slowed and landed in Nale's open hand.
"Nice try, but first surface it hits, it decelerates," he said, tossing it back. "So what are you doing here? You seem really intent on catching these guys."
"I'm only really after one of them."
"Childhood friend?"
She laughed, and threw the ball. It wasn't aimed at him, and hit the wall with a satisfying thunk.
"My team was tasked with finding out who's been killing our undercover recruitment agents," she said. "I was contacted by one of those agents earlier today."
"Risen from the dead?"
"Watch it," she said. "He lost his recruiting partner recently, under strange circumstances, and he himself is probably dead now."
"Strange circumstances?" he said, reminding himself that he didn't always have to try to be funny.
"They'd been recruiting on a mining colony. They were ambushed and attacked, and he escaped. We never even found the body of his partner, only some spatters of blood. The local militiae got involved and practically shut us out, too. The trail eventually grew cold and we were taken off the case with no luck in finding who did it. The survivor was reassigned, too, but he remembered everyone who was involved, and he had a particularly nasty feeling about one of the cops there. And right after you arrived he contacted me, saying that she was here, on my station."
"She? Oh. That one."
She gave him a look. "If it's escaped your notice, women sometimes do rise up the corporate ranks."
"If it's escaped your notice, I work for a faction that rather does imply the fact."
She nodded, and he added with a grin, "Though of course you're best left at home, watching the children and cooking, and serving us-OW!"
The ball finally hit its mark. She gloated at him as he gingerly rubbed his right side, then added, "Wait here," and left. She returned a little while later with a gun in her hand.
"Uh..." Nale said.
"Relax. Rubber bullets. They came with a shipment we got from Gallente merchants, and they're soddin' useless. Too much friction, too little weight. But you've been dodging the ball so easily that I might as well try this on you instead."
Nale stared at the gun for a while, then shrugged. "Okay. Tell me, at least, why you even let this woman undock. And that last toss is going to raise a welt, by the way."
"You deserve it," she said, taking careful aim and firing. Nale managed not to be in the shot's way.
"How do you do that?" she said, exasperated.
"I've got a talent for taking things in, little details. The undocking?"
"I wanted to keep it under the radar. Those guys I saw at the warehouse weren't amateurs, and I'd prefer not to risk any more of my people than I have to." Another shot, another miss. "Besides, Angel ops'd be just as likely to arrest these people, both on-station and on-ship, and as soon as they discovered the woman was a damn cop they'd probably let her go. Empire goodwill, and all the rest."
Another shot, but this time it connected with Nale's thigh. As he hopped around,yowling, she said, "I can't have that. I want to catch these people and take them out. Right before we left there was a general notice that an Angel had been killed on-station, and the initial description matches the man who contacted me. Last I knew he'd been following that witch, so I pulled in my contacts, tracked her down, and found her in the process of tearing your group apart." Another shot, a near-hit. "These people deserve no sympathy and no mercy. I don't expect you to understand."
"Why not?"
"You being a man of peace, and all."
He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair. "Yeah. Right."
She rested the gun on her shoulder, leaned her head to one side and asked, "This is a peaceable mission you're on, right? This healing machine of yours and all."
"It's supposed to be," he said.
"Supposed?"
"Well, it's ... this machine, it can be dangerous. We're supposedly going after it because we want to prevent it from falling into the hands of people who'd misuse it."
"Who are these people?"
"My superiors say the Sansha."
"Sansha? Nale, I've met them, and I've also met the people they sometimes hire; skittish, frightened men with a terrible darkness about them. The ones at the warehouse were not Sansha agents."
"Yeah. I know. The Sansha rumors were probably spread back at our base to distract us from the real goals of the mission."
"So you're being lied to."
"Everyone is lied to."
"Oh, come on. That's simplistic pessimism."
"Is it?" A cold glint came into his eye. "When you're sitting hip-deep in blood on a mining colony, surrounded by wreckage from some capsuleer's missile, and cradling in your arms a boy who's lost his legs and can't even feel it because he's so deep in shock, do you tell him he's going to die? Or that he's going to be fine?"
"That's an extreme example-"
"So what? It happens all the time. The more you know, the less you want to know. Can you honestly say that you're a better person now that someone you know has been killed? All that evil which surrounds us, does it change anyone it touches for the good? Even if we do manage to catch up with the people presumably responsible for all those murders you mentioned, and even if we do manage to wrest the machine from them and you end up putting a bullet into their heads, is that going to make your life any better than it was back when you didn't know about any of this? This burning sense of guilt, shame and regret over not having been able to prevent something from happening, is it really preferable to just being unaware and blissful? Sometimes we need people who know what's happening and who handle it without excuse and without sharing it with the rest of us."
"Strange words coming from a Sister."
"Nobody halfway sane does this job," he said with a sigh. "It's rewarding, but it gets to you."
"No kidding. So why join?"
"Because it's right. It's the only thing that makes sense." He leaned against the wall. "Look, I didn't so much join as get recruited. But I believe in the cause, and I believe that just as man can be cruel to man, he can also be kind. Yes, sometimes we lie, or cheat, or hurt one another. Sometimes we have to deceive. It doesn't mean we're unworthy of our existence, and it certainly doesn't mean that a person can only be either a saint or a sinner. What makes you into a good person isn't the endless purity of your actions, it's their sum total, and if you can rise above your own mistakes and make something decent come of your life, you've cheated death. The marks you left on this world will outlast you, their echoes will affect other people who will then carry on the work you started, however small, and when you finally come to look into that cold blackness of eternity, you'll know that you will never truly die."
"I'm impressed," she said.
"It's nothing really deep," he said.
"No, not that. I don't think you inhaled even once during that speech."
He stared at her, then burst into laughter.
"So you think you can change the world?" she asked, a little smile creeping into her expression.
"I don't know. We all hope to, I suppose. I'd be happy if I could just dodge those damn shots properly."
"Must be hard for a leader, to think so much."
"Am I the leader?" he said.
"The others follow you. If you hadn't noticed, it probably makes you a natural. But you always find ways to torture yourself. Every mistake becomes a damnation of your abilities, and every failure something that must be corrected."
"You think so?"
"Trust me on this," she said. "Besides, why else would you keep obsessively testing yourself? It's your one failing, the thing you've latched on to, and deep inside you believe that if you could just get this one thing right, you'd feel more at ease with the rest of your life."
Nale looked at the ceiling, then closed this eyes. "I thought I was supposed to be the one with all the serenity and answers."
"Leave it to a real woman to think things through," Hona said. "They're called Sisters for a reason, you know."
He grinned, then furrowed his brow. "It's just ... we so have to get this right. Not only because we're clearly risking our lives here - I don't care about that, which I know sounds strange, but we truly have accepted our lives and their impending ends-"
"You're talking to an Angel captain. I understand, believe me, I do."
"-But it's the task we've been given. The Sisters trusted me with this, and that matters to me. The machine has great potential, I'm sure, but that's not mine to think about. All I'm concerned with is keeping it out of the hands of the wrong people."
"And the Sisters are the only right people?" she asked.
"Gods, I hope so. Because I can't think of anyone else. I need to find the Book, and I need to take it into my care, and I need to do it before that woman does. With any luck and grace, I will, and everyone will be safe."
She looked at him for a long time, then said, "I hope you're right."
He sighed. "So do I."
"Not about the machine," she said, shaking her head and holstering the gun. "About yourself."
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This is the fifth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "The First Half". The next instalment is "A Man of Peace"
Draea felt rather uncomfortable. Her team was making its way to the warehouse area on an Angel station, and at any moment she expected to see a familiar face, someone who'd known someone she'd killed. Not that she probably needed to worry much, considering the company she was in, but it paid to be careful.
She looked around at her teammates. There was Krezek the tech-sadist, Falau the brawler, Yorlas the bounty hunter and Polok the chem-tech warfare dude. Krezek was an ex-sniper with a gift for electronics and infiltration who liked torturing his subjects without ever being in their presence. Falau was a survivor of a million little wars, ranging from barroom brawls to rush-squads on conquerable stations, and had, by his own account, had an eager hand in starting many of them. Yorlas was a considerably more careful opponent whose activities, as with Krezek's, had included sniping, along with various manners of assassination both individual and en masse. His only real goal in life was to terminate as many people as possible before his own end of times, and while he had a stated interest in experimenting with methods, he drew his pleasure from the successful taking of a life and the individual marking of his kills, and not, as Falau did, in the bloody preamble to death. Polok, a rather more personable individual whom Draea liked quite a bit, was heavily into chemistry and the myriad alterations of the human body it could bring forth. He had a preference for being called the Plague Doctor, and had stuck to it right until he told Draea about it, at which point she laughed so hard at him that she nearly collapsed on the floor. He never mentioned it again.
Supposedly the Book wouldn't work on them. They were too far gone, the violence and darkness too ingrained in the very fabric in their personality, for the Book to do anything more than give them a bad headache. If the device ever got into the wrong hands, Draea thought, they would be the first ones put against the wall.
They'd all studied the plans, although some of the data, such as where Arak kept his merchandise, had only been revealed to them just as they were getting off the ship. Some information came through Yorlas, who apparently had friends in the area. All Draea's team needed to do now was get to the warehouse, and get inside it. Krezek had vowed to take care of the last part.
As they were walking towards the station's storage areas, Polok, whose stalker instincts matched Yorlas's, turned to Draea and said, "One of the Angels is following us."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes." Polok described him in detail.
Draea thought hard, and eventually an old splinter of a memory dislodged itself. A duo of Angels had appeared on her colony a while back, recruiting miners. She'd monitored their progress, then gone dark and caught one of them alone and unawares. He'd been a stocky man, and she'd later sprained a back muscle shoving his corpse into the incinerator. The other Angel, unaware of her part in the murder, had raised a fuss and even called in some people of his own to investigate, but the corps had backed the cops and she'd stayed clean. Misplaced faith was a wonderful thing.
She called her team mates closer, and told them of all this. They grinned at each other, and Yorlas said, "Can't have him screw this up. Let's fade out. Look for the bullet."
The group split in two. Draea and Polok continued walking, but slowed their pace to an amble, and changed their route to darker streets. Krezek, Falau and Yorlas faded into the shadows.
Draea worried that the guy would have contacted other Angels, but Polok assured her they were safe. The man might have sent some message, but if he really had reported them to the active forces in the area, they'd long since have been scooped up and thrown into quarters. They kept looking around while talking, and eventually spotted a likely-looking side street between two warehouses. Everyone in the group had murderer instincts that they'd learned to trust implicitly, and those included finding the best spot to do something nasty, so it was no surprise when they came closer and saw a bullet lying at the entrance.
They walked into the alley, Draea subtly kicking the bullet away, and the Angel followed shortly after. He was closing in on them, Draea realized, and it would only be a few breaths before he engaged. The street was dark and deep.
"Don't turn around," Polok said to her, and she didn't, but she heard the sounds: There were the faintest of steps from the Angel trying to sneak closer, then a swoosh in the air, a gasp, the briefest of scuffles, and a muffled thump, followed by a gurgle and something that sounded like a wet piece of paper being torn up.
They stopped, and now she turned around, eager to inspect someone else's handiwork. She walked up to the corpse and gave it a professional's look. She wasn't so much interested in the stab wounds on his chest, or the gaping hole in his groin - everyone had their peccadilloes - but she was intrigued by the rim of shredded skin on one side of his throat, which matched neither a garrote pattern nor the serrated edge of a blade. She looked at Yorlas, who was busy cleaning off his knife.
He looked back at her, shrugged, unslung a gun that hung in a strap from his shoulders and handed it to her, saying only, "Missed. Aim needs adjusting."
She inspected the gun. It was a pressurized shotgun with six slanted choke tubes arranged radially. Each tube was lined with a magnetizing agent that helped keep its shots in line when they exited the barrels, making for longer range. The clips were twofold, one capsule of supercompressed gas and another capsule holding the ammunition. The magnetizing agent would only work on tiny metal pellets, but in Draea's view, that kind of ammo shouldn't have torn up the side of the Angel's throat like it had. Not unless the pellets had special, non-standard features.
"This ammo you have," she said to Yorlas, "Change-state, by any chance?"
He nodded.
"Activation on high-speed contact?"
Yorlas nodded again. "With skin," he said, and handed her a clip from his belt.
She inspected it, then gripped both ends tight and pushed in. She felt the internal safety dislodge, and one end of the clip became loose. She reached for one of the dead man's hands and pulled it close, removed the clip top and poured a handful of ammo into his cooling palm. They were little spherical pellets, and as soon as they touched his skin, several tiny, angled blades shot out from their surface, the blades curved in on the centre like the slanted path of a meteor falling to earth.
"And when they go into someone's skin?" she asked Yorlas.
"They spin," he said. "Work through his veins. Make a mess."
"So you could hit anyone anywhere on their body with this, and..."
"And the orbs will go in, make their way through the bloodstream and pulp everything they touch," Polok said, walking up to them. "Just one gets into you and you're in trouble. Close to an artery and you're dead, but even if it's just in your toes, they'll still cause pain so agonizing it'll drop you on the spot."
He picked up one of the silver pellets lying on top of the victim's palm, and looked at its blades. "These are regular issue. They got heat-seeking ones as well. Bronze-colored, I think. Nasty little things."
There was a beep that startled Draea far more than it should have. Yorlas pulled out a communicator, and Polok said, "Not again. That's, what, the third time you pull out that thing?"
Yorlas, ignoring him, said, "My contact on station. Says the Sisters are going to the warehouse. We should hurry." He got the gun back from Draea and said, "I fire the first shot."
Falau said, "The hell you do. Next one's mine."
Yorlas clapped the gun and said, "I need to test the aim. Problem?"
Falau got in his way and said, "Might be."
Polok stared at the two of them, then said, "By the gods ... all right. All right. Hey!"
They looked at him.
"Yorlas gets the next shot, because we'll need to stalk these people, but once we're safe and good, Falau can have all the fun he wants. Happy?"
The two men looked at one another, then back at him and nodded.
"All right," Polok said, and turned to Yorlas. "At least turn off that communicator of yours. I'm tired of having you spill our plans to everyone on the station."
They set off, Polok muttering to Draea, "You know that execution test to get on the team, the one we did right at the end? Yorlas thought of that. Idiot."
"You've got nothing to compensate for. Why on earth are you bitching about him?"
"He just rubs me the wrong way."
"Polok, you've killed at least four hundred people."
"Your point?"
***
Once at the warehouse, Krezek took to the fore and did his magic, though not without mumbling comments to empty air. "Guns, yeah, fine. Gimme a circuit board any day of the week. About time I got something to do here."
Draea, standing nearest to him and feeling impatient, said, "Want me to tell Yorlas of that attitude?"
"Not on your life."
"Then hurry it up. And add an automated opener for the doors, too, in case we need to make a getaway."
"Sure. Want them to explode?"
"No, thanks, just make them open."
"Roger."
He rose, keyed in a combination on the lock, and the doors slid open. The team walked in.
Yorlas's informer had not given them the precise location of the Book, so they decided to wait for the Sisters to show up, and to shadow them. The team took its positions, deep enough in the shadows that they wouldn't be spotted, but with access to walking paths so they could follow the progression of anyone walking through the warehouse. Draea made sure she was in visual range of everyone else, and settled in to wait. There were other entrances to this place, but she expected the Sisters to come in through the main one.
It wasn't long before the warehouse doors opened again and the Sisters came in, flanked by two guards. Draea's team stayed on them until they got to the box's location, and watched as they called it down from the scaffolds. Draea noticed that while two Sisters walked up to the box, and two more looked on curiously, one the Sisters stayed very definitely at the back, looking around a bit. She grinned in the darkness. However Yorlas had managed this, he'd earned his place on the team.
She pulled out her gun and saw the other team members do the same. A few paces away, Yorlas took aim. She watched as he relaxed his shoulders, took a breath and held it, and leaned a little into the shot. He closed one eye, and fired.
One of the Sisters guys started spouting blood from his throat. The other Sisters faded from view, and before she could react, Falau had sauntered up to the box, picked it up, and started to inspect its contents. Draea was about to get up and go to him when there was a bang, and Falau crumpled to the ground. He dropped the box as his body fell, and she saw the catalyst roll out of it. People not her own started moving in the shadows.
Draea exclaimed, "Shit!" and ducked just as something was fired at her head. There was a mad scramble as her team tried to rush toward the doors, provide cover fire for each other, and not get shot, all at once. Once they got in view of the exit, Draea saw Krezek manically working on his mobile interface to activate the doors, and she realized that as soon as they went through their silhouettes would be easy targets. Polok caught up with her, and as they ran she hissed at him, "Lay down interference!"
He reached for the bandolier on his shoulder and pulled off a couple of multiburst grenades, set one to thermal and another to electromagnetic, and tossed them. The thermal one bounced towards the attackers who were following them, flared up and sprayed a thin drizzle all around that immediately caught fire. The chemical wouldn't burn the surfaces it coated up, and only flared up for a few moments, so Draea hoped the warehouse's fire extinguishing system wouldn't immediately start dropping anti-inflammatory powder. She risked a look back and thought she saw the hunters stopped in their tracks for a few precious seconds.
The EM grenade, set to visible-light focus, blasted off behind them. It skewed light and caused such massive refraction that aiming at a target became next to impossible, like trying to find the one true reflection in a shattered mirror. It was possible to set these things to near-lethal levels, but apparently Polok had taken the wise stance that blinding everyone in the room wouldn't be good procedure. Shots were fired, but none of Draea's people got hit, and at last they escaped through the doors, blinking frantically in the fake sunlight to rid their optic nerves of the grenade's refracted remnants, and quickly made their way down the street.
***
They were back on the ship. The team was setting up their gear and preparing for launch. Draea, in her quarters, was rapidly planning their next move. After they'd undocked from the station, blessedly unnoticed, and set off in a random direction, she filed several questions to her Society contacts. Some were about mission minutiae, and had Draea thanking the gods for her mining colony experience and the knowledge of ship statements and docking logs it entailed. Others were about certain individuals on the mission, based on a dark intuition that had begun growing in Draea's mind. She put a high priority on them, knowing that the team would soon have to plan its next move.
Her answers arrived shortly after. They commended her for her insight, and gave her an unofficial promotion to team leader. They also included some very interesting information on her mission and personnel concerns, along with suggestions on how to deal with both.
Draea drew up a flight route and sent it to the main console onboard her ship. Afterwards, she left her quarters and walked through the ship, eventually making her way to a little-used maintenance area. In there she went to a repair parts cabin and, from way at the back, removed a small, circular item with a red, opaque button at the center. She returned with it to her quarters, sent off a quick message to base, and received an immediate reply. The item in her hand lit up and blinked twice. She pressed firmly on its small button. The item lit briefly once more, then went dark again. It was now coded to her fingerprint.
Draea sat there for a little while, then pocketed the disc, sent out a call for people to meet her on the bridge, and headed off. On her way there, almost on instinct, she stopped by one of the hi-tech weapons cabinets and retrieved another disc, this one with a number of sockets and wirings on its surface.
Once they were all settled on the bridge, Draea spoke up. "First off, the Society has made me the de facto leader of this group, if there ever was any doubt. Problems?"
The assembled group shook their heads.
"Good. We're taking off."
"Back to base?" Polok asked.
"Far from it. We've found the Book, for real this time," Draea replied. "And we're off to get it."
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the fourth instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "The Room". The next instalment is "Of a Sentence".
Nale was sitting on his bed in the ship quarters, fully dressed, looking at the thing in his hand.
It was a metal device the size of his fist, curved and with a little opaque sphere set in the middle. The sphere had a red sheen and showed a faint triangular halo. As he rolled it in one direction, it turned yellow, then orange, blue, indigo and purple. He rolled it back to red and found that while it couldn't roll far in the other direction, forcing the sphere a little would turn the red to green; though when he let go, it shifted back to red.
It was a catalyst for the Book. The machine could not be set off unless someone nearby activated this device. Otherwise, the Book would remain completely inert, and supposedly appeared quite innocuous. It was also the first piece of actual proof Nale had been given that confirmed the veracity of their mission, and while he had been happy in the past to heedlessly go along with his directives, he was very grateful that ops had seen fit to give him one of these items. Not because he might have to use it - that eventuality seemed ugly and enticing, all at once - but because it gave him an anchor, a counterpoint to the weirdness that surrounded this whole mess. The more he had found out about the hunt, the less real it all seemed. This catalyst would keep him going.
Nale held it up to the light, watching the refractions. The catalyst's surface had an oily sheen, so that the light danced through the spectrum of colors, but the sphere set in its middle drank in all light like a black ocean and gave nothing out in return. Nale thought of how amazing it was, that these small things might effect such big changes in the people around them, and he mused that it was really quite the same with his team and the rescue missions they'd done. Oftentimes he had wished that his own team, and the Sisters at large, could make more of a difference, but then - he rolled the sphere back and forth - they'd just have to make do with what they had.
Since its discovery, this little piece of equipment had become the very basis of their mission. It came from a set of several catalysts that had just recently surfaced and, according to the Sisters' analysis, gave final proof that the Book not only existed but had also surfaced outside Jove space. Nale and everyone else on the team had been given clear instructions that if they were to retrieve the Book they were allowed to set it off in an emergency, but not unless absolutely necessary, and preferably not amongst large groups of people. The Book supposedly had an area of effect, and they must only ever turn it up to blue levels, which would be enough to disable most people. Higher levels would permanently mark anyone unlucky enough to be in the vicinity.
They themselves were safe from the Book's effects, something apparently to do with a combination of genetic makeup, personal strength, and simple immunity to having their brains scrambled for peace. The Book, Nale had been told, would reach into people's minds and forcibly eliminate warlike, angry and hateful tendencies, and would probably lobotomize the poor bastards in the process if set on too high a level. But for those who'd managed to get through the Sisters' regimen, these feelings were so faint to begin with, so little a part of their personality, that their removal wouldn't cause any permanent damage. The machine might have some effect, the Sisters administrators had grudgingly admitted, but it shouldn't be anything to worry about.
Roll the sphere, roll the sphere, red to green.
There was a knock on the door, and Shiqra, a teammate of Nale's, walked in without waiting for a response. Shiqra was a thin man, full of jittery energy than that made him look like his skin had him trapped. He wore tight clothing and didn't smile so much as implicitly grin, and had the brusque manner of someone who'd done more than his share of high-risk rescue missions. He'd been one of the first to get recruited.
Before Nale could utter a word, Shiqra said, "We've got a lead. Solid one, this time. Need to head off right now before Empire gets a word of it."
'Empire' was their codeword for everyone who wasn't a Sister, and applied particularly to some of the more sinister forces of the four Empires, each of which, while still in the dark, was slowly becoming aware that the Sisters were after something.
"Where is it?" Nale asked.
"With the Angels," Shiqra said and left the room.
***
One journey later, they were at an Angel station, and the noise was deafening. They were hardly even out of the docking bays and into the marketing area proper before they were assailed by sensory overload. Roadside vendors shouted at them from every direction; booster peddlers walked around dragging locked plexiglas carts, their chemical wares clattering inside; and sweaty, stinking Drop maniacs, with their characteristic soaked rags bound over their temples, sat on the curbs and screamed at things that weren't really there. Condensation from body heat covered the walls, and the Angel banners that hung on every wall were limp and dark with wet grime. The clamor was giving Nale a headache.
Strictly speaking it wasn't necessary for the Angels to allow these huge marketing bazaars on their stations - they were a tightly run criminal organization whose business deals tended to be of a subtler nature - but they'd long since discovered the benefits of networking and of providing social hubs. Some of their best recruits were reportedly merchants who had come to an Angel station in search of profits, found they liked the atmosphere, and decided to get involved.
It made sense that these people be the first to dredge up the Book. Aside from their entrepreneurial spirit they were the prime harvesters of Jove technology, were spread around most of known space, and were notoriously effective when it came to stealing other people's things. They were wanderers, too, and had never been content merely sit at the Serpentis' heels; always exploring, always pushing further.
Nale spotted a few Angel representatives, who nodded genially to them. Angel officials routinely kept up a highly visible presence on station, but stayed calm and unafraid to chat with the civilians. It was clear that this was a place where people knew each other, and where business was expected to tick on without undue hassle. Nale's worries about standing out in the crowd had proved unfounded, too: There was such a mix of people here that even with their Sisters badges on their arms, Nale and his team didn't attract the slightest bit of unwanted attention. He was relieved, and hoped it would stay that way.
The badges were the standard Sisters wear, worn by members in war-zones to show neutrality and protect from harm. They probably weren't really that necessary as far as protection was concerned; people didn't usually get bothered at these stations for no reason, and those nice Angel officials wouldn't hesitate to crack skulls if any trouble arose. But what the badges brought as well was special dispensation. Sisters were often allowed with very little explanation to pass into places closed to others, and nobody liked to question or delay them too much. After all, the skin they were saving might one day be your own.
Nale and his team were searching for a particular vendor, and trying to do it without asking any questions, but so far they'd had no luck. Two of Nale's other teammates, Berkhes and a big, hulking man called Monas, were lagging behind, looking around and, in Nale's mind, taking a little too long to get to where they were going. They were five on the task force; Zetyn, their tech guy, was back on the ship, while Shiqra was lagging even further behind.
Shiqra suddenly started walking faster, passing Berkhes and Monas and reaching Nale. "I've got it," he said to Nale.
"You know where the guy is?"
"Yeah, just figured it out. Come on, let's get moving."
They walked down several streets away from the main square, towards the fancier areas of the station. Shiqra, Nale and Monas led the group, but Berkhes lagged a little behind, looking thoughtful. Nale didn't comment; Berkhes was an old friend who'd shared innumerable missions, and was as dependable as any man he'd ever known. If he needed to work something out, he'd be given the space.
At last they came to a house that shone with affluence even by the standards of others around it. Its entrance was guarded by Angel officials who betrayed none of the warmth of their brethren down by the market, and the team was barred entrance.
And there it might have ended, in more ways than one, if someone hadn't come out of the house, muttering curses. It was a female Angel captain, and Nale immediately approached her.
"Excuse me?" he said.
"Yes?"
"I'm Nale, Sisters of EVE," he said, offering a hand which she shook.
"I'm Hona, Guardian Angels, special forces. What do you need?"
"We desperately need an audience with this merchant. Is there any way you could help us?"
"Help is usually done through deals. What could you offer me and my team?"
"Well, uh, if you get a papercut I could probably bandage it," Nale said.
Hona stared at him for a while, then asked, "Is Arak expecting you?"
"No," Nale admitted.
"Is he going to be happy about whatever offer you have for him?"
"I honestly have no idea."
She stared at him a little longer, then said, "Well, you're Sisters and I've got sympathy for the cause. And plus, it'll probably piss Arak off, which is all for the good as far as I'm concerned. So I'll let you in under my authority."
"Is it going to get you into trouble?" Nale asked.
"Doesn't matter. My task force has been decommissioned. I was looking for some work for us, or at least a little help in finding a person I know who's gone missing, but apparently neither are worth Arak's time. I'll have to find the guy myself, clearly, then start flying aimlessly through space. Maybe you'll have better luck than me."
She spoke to one of the security guards, then waved the Sisters in and walked off.
They entered the house. Arak the merchant resided on the second story, in a massive Caldari-esque chamber. Pieces of onyx ochre and splinters of cooled gelidus ice were carefully placed, offering half an aesthetic view and half an undertone of religious symbolism. Multihued globes of cytoserocin, a gas cloud that constantly revolved and coalesced, lay in porcelain bowls designed for sacrifices to the gods. Nale looked at a celadon sphere, and its purplish shade gave him a shiver.
One wall was completely overtaken by a sand waterfall whose quiet hiss felt soothing to the ear. In the air, laser birds flew around, 3D images projected by hidden vidcasters. It was a remarkably nice office, and the whole effect was only slightly spoiled by the giant Quafe cooler behind Arak's desk. It was full of Red Quafe, a special version with selected rogue ingredients, and the reason became apparent as soon as the team entered. Arak, overweight and clad in figure-hiding robes, sprung up from his desk, paced to them and shook their hands. His brow glistened. He waved his hands at the birds. "Their flight is symbolic, too, the patterns. They're casting good luck on this room, good business luck."
Nale followed his lead and sat in a chair by the desk. "We understand you had a recent shipment come in with some strange things, including an inert block of shaped metal. We'd like to buy it."
"What, sight unseen?" Arak said.
"Yes."
"Sure."
Nale's team looked at one another. This was a little too easy.
"Uh, have you used it?" Nale asked.
"Nope, I haven't. It just got in, doesn't seem to do much, design isn't familiar, but it just looks like some old, broken-down machine and I can't imagine what anyone would want with it apart from antiques interest." The words came out in a gabble. Nale noticed two open RQ bottles on the desk.
"Do you know what it is?"
"Oh sure, I've got some idea, but I'll leave it to the experts to decide."
Nale cast a glance at Berkhes, who surreptitiously rolled his eyes. Neither of them believed Arak had any idea at all.
"Do you have it here?" Nale asked.
"No, it's at my warehouse." Arak leaned forward on his desk, nudging the RQ bottles. "You know, I don't usually inquire on these things, but I'm curious as to why the Sisters would be after something like this."
Nale sat back in his chair. "We hear it might have some healing properties, but we need to research it first."
"You people have remarkably good spies, then, since I hadn't even started to put out word that I had the machine."
"We're quite happy getting here first, thanks," Berkhes said, and flashed him a small smile. "Could we see it, please?"
"Oh, it isn't here. I don't store any of my merchandise on-site, so I'll need to send a couple of people with you to a warehouse elsewhere"
"I'm sure we can find our own way," Shiqra said in an impatient tone. "Regarding payment-"
Arak held up a beringed hand. "No worries, I trust the Sisters. We can discuss it when you get back. Here's the address."
He keyed in a combination on his console. The laser birds settled on his desk, where they melted into words and numbers on the desk surface. "I'd like to give you the location inside the warehouse, but can't, sorry. Policy. My men will go with you and pull out the right box."
They paid their respects and exited the building, setting off towards the warehouse in tow with Arak's enforcers. As they walked down the street, Berkhes whispered to Nale, "I'm not at all sure I trust Shiqra. He's been acting a little nervy lately. When we were at the market I think I saw him get a message on a transmitter, something that certainly wasn't meant for the rest of us. And he keeps fiddling with something in his pocket that ... well," Berkhes added with a little grin, "I really hope isn't what I think it is."
He was about to say more, but Shiqra walked up to them, smiled and said, "I'll catch up. I need to send a quick message to main base about where we're going and what our plans are." Shiqra dropped back, and Nale looked to Berkhes, who raised one eyebrow but said nothing.
Once they got to the warehouse the merchant's crew let them in. They entered the building, which was so massive that Nale couldn't see to its end in the gloomy light. It was full to the rafters with stuff, stacked on ten-floor scaffoldings and surrounded by metal walkers with giant, piston-pumped arms.
"The guy really is a collector," Berkhes said.
They were led deep into the warehouse. At last the merchant's men stopped, and keyed in numbers on a console. An automated machine slid along the rails of the scaffolding, clamped on to a small box, pulled it out and lowered it to the ground.
Nale and his companions looked at one another, all of them sharing the thought that this contained looked much too small to hold the Book.
Nale and Berkhes walked up to the box. "I've got a bad feeling about this," Berkhes said, and Nale nodded. One of the guards walked up, knelt in front of the box and unlocked it, then stepped back a respectable distance.
Nale took a look around the room, taking in his teammembers' faces. Berkhes looked fairly calm, having apparently arrived at the same conclusion that Nale had. Zetyn was feigning an unimpressed look, but his excitement easily shone through. Shiqra just looked dyspeptic.
Nale turned back to the container. He opened it, looked in and felt like his entire body had deflated, a mixture of loosened nerves and disappointment.
In the box, which was far too big for its contents, was a catalyst. It was larger the one Nale had been given, the size of his entire forearm instead of his fist, but otherwise it was exactly the same.
Nale sighed and turned to Berkhes, intending to ask him what to do now, but stopped short when he saw the man's face.
Berkhes stood stock still, staring out at empty air as if he'd seen infinity. Then his eyes bulged, he stuttered something, and blood began to spurt in great gouts from his neck.
Nale and his companions immediately went for the nearest shelter, all of them veterans of a myriad firefights, all of them filing away their burgeoning grief for later. The merchant's men, slower and inexperienced, stood their ground, and moments later Nale heard a telltale swoosh that he'd only half-registered while staring into the box. Both men grimaced and clamped their hands to their necks. They half-managed to reach for their guns before collapsing on the floor, spouting blood.
In the deepening shadows, Nale spied a team of people moving towards them. Some guy in combat gear marched right up to the box without sparing the Sisters a look. He lifted it and looked inside, and seemed about to say something when there was a bang, and the front of the man's chest bloomed red. He fell to the ground, dropping the box and sending the catalyst tumbling out of it.
Everyone around saw that it was not the Book itself. There was a hushed silence, followed by a barely audible "... shit!" somewhere in the dark, and the sounds of gunfire and running. The Sisters remained inert and completely quiet, Nale included, until he felt the cold steel of a pistol laid against the back of his neck.
A voice said, "What you're looking for has already left." The pistol was withdrawn, and there was the sound of running feet.
Nale stood very still, listening to the receding gunfire. He remembered that voice. It belonged to an Angel captain called Hona.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the third instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "Inertial". The next instalment is "The First Half"
"Much as I appreciate your enthusiasm, you need to stop this nonsense. If you walk up to someone, if you distract them for a second and then manage to take them down, you kill them on the spot. That's what you do. Okay? If you absolutely have to leave a personal mark, you find something lying around and shove it into their eyesocket. What you do not do is let them get up and make a run for it before throwing a knife into their backs. Let's be professional about this. And stop crying."
Draea, standing in a crouch and breathing heavily, looked up at him and said, "I'm not crying."
"That ain't sweat."
"Little runt kneed me in the groin. It sets off the tear ducts."
"Told you she had balls!" a teammate shouted to them.
Alad leaned his head back and rubbed his eyes. "Alright!" he shouted. "Session over, thanks, go away, people! Dinner's at seven." On command, the holograms in the area faded out, shields blinked into oblivion, and various pieces of cover, hurdle and barricade collapsed into themselves and slid silently down into slots on the floor.
Alad extended a hand to Draea, who accepted it and stood up. One of their victims was lying on a bunch of black paper-maché rocks nearby, snoring.
"I'm getting a little tired of this, Alad," she said.
"Are you, dear?"
"No, actually, scratch that. I'm getting so utterly sick of it that I could vomit blood. If I have to go through one more stupid exercise with one more stupid fake victim where I push a rubber pin against their gut and tell them they're dead, I swear on all that is holy, I'm going to shove this pretend knife through my own eye until it rattles inside my skull, let the last beats of my dying heart carry it through my body, and pull it out my ass."
She sighed. "Also, the martial arts sessions are stupid. Nobody does small-joint manipulation anymore."
"I'm glad you're opinionated." He caught her glimpse. "No, seriously, I am. It means you care. And I'm glad that you care, because you're being promoted."
She stared at him. "What, just like that?"
"You've been on countless recon missions, completely unsimulated, protecting our interests in all sorts of situations. You've shown a remarkable ability to stay alive and to ensure that others ... well, don't. And your IPM index-
"My what?"
"Int-Per-Mem, dear, don't interrupt. It shows quite amazing numbers through the entire scale, mental and physical. I'd be scared if I knew you were on my heels."
The victim got up, yawned and started walking away. "There's another group coming in," Alad said to him. "Where are you going, Placx?"
"For a smoke," Placx said without slowing.
Alad watched him go, then turned back to Draea. "Follow me."
They walked through the compound, passing the exercise rooms, the altered states chambers and the torture vaults. Each was designed to test the subject's physical, mental and spiritual tolerance, to find their breaking points and how they would react when pushed to that level, and even, for the torture vaults, what they'd do to others. A team member prone to murder everyone around him was as much a liability as one who'd go catatonic.
They moved down to a lower floor, passed through corridors Draea rarely traversed, and at last came to an unremarkable door that she had never even noticed before. She stood in front of it, but it didn't open.
"Special access only, dear," Alad said.
Draea raised an eyebrow. There were no visible scanners or locking mechanisms in front of the door. Nevertheless, when Alad stood in front of it, the door hummed softly and opened. The space inside was almost pitch black, with only one cone of light shining down brightly on a metal chair a few steps into the room.
"Don't worry," Alad said. "You've already passed."
Draea shrugged, walked in and sat on the chair. Behind her, the door closed, and what little outside light had been flowing in was cut off.
She sensed someone nearby, but she did not feel threatened.
A voice, issuing from a speaker high above, said, "You are alone in this room."
"You lie," she said. It was not a rebuke; it was a statement of fact.
The voice, sounding pleased, continued, "You have now been promoted to task force operative."
The voice fell silent for a moment, in quiet expectancy. Draea said, "... thanks?"
"Do you understand what it is that the operatives do?"
"Killing people is a given," Draea said. "The rest doesn't really matter, does it?"
"That depends," the voice said. "Before we continue, you should know that you will never be allowed to speak of this to anyone not on your own task force. You do, however, need to know a few things if you're to do a decent job for us. Does the name Book of Emptiness tell you anything?"
"Not really. Sounds Amarrian, but that's about it."
"It was. Supposedly a lost holy book, one that would bring immediate ascension to the reader. It is now the chosen codename for a machine that we're after. Set at low power it has the capacity to heal some mild psychological issues. On high, it has the power to brainwash people."
"Ah, so you want me to get it for you."
"No. We want you to destroy it."
"You do?"
"Yes."
"Are you serious?"
"It is a non-negotiable part of our arrangement. We have spies out right now, various scouting forces. Once we get a positive lead, we'll send out one of the task forces."
"So why me?" Draea asked.
The voice replied, "You have excelled at what you do. You've gotten this far and managed not to die, and our nanomachinery tests prove that you have a natural aversion to the Book's effects. Aside from this curious obsession of yours to hit people at range with ridiculous weapons, you are one of our absolute top performers. Not only that, but in your previous life you showed a remarkable acumen for flying under the radar. We need agents who can work on the edge without falling off or bragging to everyone who's watching."
"Do I at least get to know who you people are?"
The voice laughed. "If you want, though it won't make much of a difference either way. We're a special section of the Society of Conscious Thought. We're operating on behalf of the Hyperconsciousness agenda." The voice paused again, and when Draea registered no expression, it continued, "There is a final test. We know you're capable of committing atrocious acts both in cold blood and in the heat of battle."
"Damn straight," Draea said.
"But it's one thing to do it against an enemy you dislike, and quite another to do it against someone who hasn't done anything to you."
Another light turned on, shining a bright cone down a little way from Draea. It illuminated a small metal table on which lay a knife with a very long and narrow blade - a knife useable for both slitting throats and stabbing hearts - and a woman in a chair, tied and strapped in, wearing only underwear and a bra. The straps were so tight and numerous that her body and head were absolutely immobile, and both her throat and her wrists were exposed, the latter strapped to the chair's handles. She was gagged, and there were streaks of tears and snot running down her face.
"I like how you let her wear a bra," Draea said. "Otherwise this'd just be so undignified."
"Personally, I wanted to strap Placx in there, but they overruled me," a different voice said from overhead.
Draea looked up and grinned. "Alad?" she said.
"I swear, that man's played victim for the last time. We just cannot have people slouching around here.
"Should I do it, Alad?"
"Do anything you like, dear. But do it to the hilt."
"If we're all ready here-" the other voice said.
"Oh yes, by all means. Let's treat this with the reverence it deserves," Alad said with exaggerated seriousness, then went quiet. After a few seconds he added, "No pressure."
Draea slowly walked to the woman and the table, where she picked up the knife and weighed it in her hand.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"Irrelevant," the nameless voice replied.
"That's for me to decide," Draea said. "And besides, since you're so concerned with cold blood, I hardly think it'd make things any easier for me if I knew her name."
The voice said, "Still-", but Alad cut in with "Inibjer."
"Thanks," Draea said. She looked Inibjer in the eye and said, "If it helps, I've done this before."
She tossed the knife in the air a couple of times, then leaned down to Inibjer and whispered, "I'm not going to kill you. Don't worry. I'm going to walk away slowly, and they'll have to find someone else to do the job. I might even be able to get help, put a stop to this."
Tears started running down Inibjer's eyes, and Draea said, "Be strong." Despite the restraints, Inibjer tried to nod, but all that came out was a tremor.
Draea slowly walked away, then, in one swift motion, she turned, raised the knife and threw it with massive force. It whizzed through the air and sliced just past Inibjer's head, grazing her right temple and bouncing off the wall beyond.
There was a sigh from above.
Frowning, Draea walked past Inibjer and picked up the knife, then stalked back to her, said, "Sorry, dear. I lied," and leaned over the prone victim. Inibjer trembled and shivered for a moment, then gurgled and went slack, maroon rivulets trailing down her arms and chest.
Draea smiled, stroked Inibjer's hair and cheek, then absent-mindedly wiped her hand on her shirt. Behind her, the outside door slid open with a metallic hum. She turned and walked towards it, but hesitated at the exit. "Alad?" she said.
"Yes?"
"What would've happened if I'd refused to kill her?"
"Oh, we'd have filled the chamber with poisonous gas."
"Are you serious?"
"What, you think I'd want to go in there and do it personally? You've got a knife, you psychopath."
She left the chamber, laughing loudly.
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This is the second instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. The previous instalment is "On This Earth". The next instalment is "The Room"
Nale wiped the sweat off his brow. He'd only just returned to the bench after the day's physical set, and his hands were still shaking. If he weren't a dying man, he'd have been worried about his health.
He looked around. The gym was active, if basic. The mats weren't self-cleaning, but they did have a fairly good antibacterial skin - as Nale had been grateful for during all those times he'd had to do sprawl or duck-and-roll exercises - and they were being put to good use by two dozen men engaged in various versions of fight sports. In the cardio section, the magnetic treadmills had auto-adjusting capabilities that kept the speed and incline in line with one's required heart rate, and the pads could even be tuned to variable repulsion in order to better simulate grass. They worked and worked well, and routinely put Nale to within a fraction of a heart attack, but they were getting a little worn. Nale suspected that one of these days a treadmill would break and someone would find themselves launched through the roof. The gym had low ceilings, too.
A logo of the Sanctuary, one of the corporations belonging to the Sisters of EVE, was stamped on all machines in this section, along with all the benches. Nale idly reached out and rubbed the logo embossed on his bench. The narrow ridges of the Sanctuary star felt wonderfully cold to the touch. He'd been here for several months, training and doing missions, and at times the only things that felt real in this world were the ridges and bumps in the logo, and the fire in his body when he worked out.
The compound itself was shaped like the Sisters' logo, with three isolated sections forming a rough circle. One of them was the living quarters and training grounds for the task forces to which Nale belonged; another was the administrative and general work center, where normal Sisters business was conducted; and the third was the ops center, where nobody went.
Everywhere in the gym, someone was being brought to sweat and tears. In one corner Berkhes, a close friend, was being put through the inertial test, where a machine fired rubber-coated balls at him at high speeds. Nale watched him and rubbed his own bruises, bright purple and growing. He hated that machine.
One of the monitors sat down with him and asked how he was doing. The monitors were half personal trainers and half nurses, and showed up usually when people collapsed or started to vomit.
"I'm all right," Nale said.
"Shakes?"
"Yeah."
The lights in the gym were tiring Nale's eyes. It was after dark, and the ceiling in the gym was beset with windows. During the day the crew'd be blinded by the sun, and at night the stars would look down on them with icy glares. Every so often a trail would pass over the skies, and Nale, trying to keep his mind off the exhaustion, would wonder if it was a falling star or a capsuleer. They turned the lights up after dusk, and the monitors made sure the trainees kept up a constant pace. Everyone knew the agony of stopping or changing your motion was so much worse than plunging on.
"Well, you did push it pretty hard there," the monitor said, and Nale had to squint to see his face. "I saw you do the inertial. You'll make that machine burn out before you quit."
"That's the point," Nale said. "This is the only thing I still haven't gotten a handle on, and I'll keep doing it until I get it right."
"That's what I like to hear," the monitor said. "Ops want to see you."
"Beg pardon?"
"Do you know where ops is?"
"Everyone knows where ops is."
"Then get your ass in gear, son."
As Nale hauled himself to his legs and set off, the monitor added, "Oh, one thing. You eaten yet?"
"Nope."
"Good."
***
He wanted to die.
Instead of being greeted by serious people in Sisters uniforms, he'd been met by more monitors, asked to change into an electrorhythm costume that would monitor his body to an insane level of detail, and sent deep into the place for even more tests.
This part of compound was also well-lit, but its architecture felt far less welcoming and was closer to Caldarian angles than the Gallentean curves he was used to. There were narrow corridors with locked doors, and once Nale had finally been led to the testing area, things didn't much improve. The equipment was sleek, black and massive, and most of it looked like a cross between mining equipment and torture devices. Only even half of the devices, to Nale's mind, could possibly fit a human body in one piece. They had no logos, and operated in utter silence. There were no windows here.
One of those machines was called Infinity-8, and looked like a drive shaft: A large spherical construction on one end, one that turned out to contain a gyroscope, followed by a long, windowless corridor. The gyro spun him through 360 degrees at high speeds, after which he was made to walk through the corridor and found it beset with monitors on every surface. The monitors transmitted video specifically designed to disorient his perception, and blasted out alpha sound waves aimed at affecting his cognitive abilities. He made it through without screaming, crying or vomiting, though it was close, and on the other end had to put on a helmet that attached itself to his face through microscopic probes and forced him to play Mind Clash against AI opponents, first a single one, then groups of smaller ones. He did better against the smaller ones, which relied more on oversight than concentration, but by the end his head had started to throb quite strongly. Also, the microprobes made his scalp itch like mad.
Once he was finished with all the tests, and vowing that if he lived through the day he was going to start drinking again, they made him go through a series of inspections. In theory the checkups could have been done by machines, but the Sisters preferred the human touch, so he had to stand naked and rather embarrassed while the monitors went over his vitals. One of them mentioned to him, "You're a natural."
Nale, who was trembling from exhaustion and could barely stand, said, "I don't feel like a natural."
"Well, you're the first one we didn't have to carry in here on a stretcher. You're amazingly relaxed."
"Comes with death," he said.
The monitor gave him a funny look, then said. "Tests are over. After you've cleaned up, ops people want to talk to you." The monitor looked at the screen showing Nale's vitals and said, "Now his adrenaline rises. You're a strange, strange man, Nale."
***
He walked into a large and remarkably low-tech room. It had one round table whose surface was a glass finish, a black matte with a green shade, and at which were seated four people, three in official Sisters wear and one in casual. One chair was empty.
Nale recognized one of the three Sisters operatives as Riserakko Isenairos, the Sanctuary's chief advisor, but the other two were unknown to him. He looked at the casually dressed man and was surprised to see Berkhes, who grinned at him.
Nale addressed the Sisters. "I was expected?"
"You were," one of them replied. "Have a seat. I'm Jonak."
He sat. The chair felt remarkably soft.
"Comfy?" Jonak said.
"I could fall asleep here," Nale said.
Jonak said, "I imagine you could. They've been working you pretty hard out there."
"I suppose. I'd still like another go at the inertial, just as soon as my feet turn back from rubber to solids."
Jonak gave a brief smile, and slid a reader across to Nale. The device was about the size of Nale's forearm, and was already turned on. The words, "Book of Emptiness" were lit up on the front.
"You know we've been setting up scout teams," Jonak said.
"I know you've been setting up a lot of teams," Nale said. "I've done a fair number of non-scout missions. I've heard the name of Sansha's Nation whispered, but nothing concrete."
"So you have. About those missions ..." Jonak replied, and looked to his two compatriots.
Before they had a chance to comment, Berkhes cut in. "Most of them were simulated."
Nale stared at him. "What?"
"They've been pumping us full of nanomachinery and sending us after transmitters planted by our own people. Half the time, the stuff we were handling wasn't even there. I just got promoted, myself, and I wanted to punch these people in the face when I found out."
Nale sat back in his chair, stunned.
Jonak said, "We need people who possess not only an empathy for this kind of thing, but also an immunity to certain chemical, neurological and psychological pressures. People whose very natures would already make them perfect candidates for the Sisters, but who are willing to go even further than that."
"So they've been pumping us full of nanobots, usually by making us drink them, and making us see visions," Berkhes interjected again. "Supposedly it's a test of how we'd react to the Book itself. The bots flush out when we piss, apparently."
Nale sat there, still stunned, then shrugged and went, "All right. What do you need?"
The three Sisters representatives looked at one another, then back at him. "Do you have any questions?"
Nale tapped the reader. "I presume they'll be answered in here."
"Any comments?"
"Nope."
Riserakko, the Sanctuary advisor, scratched the thin strip of beard on his chin and said, "We've spent a long time playing with your head and pushing you beyond your usual limits in almost every conceivable way. Doesn't that bother you?"
"I'm a little concerned that you found it necessary to lie to me, but I appreciate that the tests probably wouldn't have worked otherwise. Aside from that, no." Nale leaned forward. "Look, I'm dying. I hope you know this. I'll be in perfect health one moment, then the next I'll be just one more cooling body. I've already had my world turned inside out and I'm still learning to see it anew. I honestly can't be bothered to waste energy on being angry at you people. Anyway, I've found new strength through the exercise, the tests and the missions, and nobody can take that away from me."
"This is true," said the last, unnamed Sisters representative. His face was rough-hewn, and he spoke in carefully measured tones. "There is certainly nothing we can take from you. In fact, I have been going over the results of your tests, and they are quite astounding. We have been hammering you from every angle, and not only have you withstood it like no one else, your abilities have actually started to exceed our measurements. We want to move you up from the scouting teams and into the operational league itself. Once the real thing starts, you'll be in the heat of the fray."
"Thanks. Uh, did you notice the bit about me dying?"
The man leaned forward. "Quite frankly, with the things we have been putting you through, if you were going to die any time soon you would be dead already."
Nale stopped short at that. All this time he'd had unwavering faith in the Sisters' ability to decide what was right for him and his faction brothers, even when they'd been sent out on dubious missions with no explanation given. It occurred to him now that one of the reasons he'd been chosen for this task force was precisely because he hadn't required any explanation, or asked any questions. "The information," he said, just to say something, "that's all in this reader, right?"
"It is," Jonak said. "You can't take it outside this section of the compound, obviously, so we've set up new quarters for you here. Go and familiarize yourself with the material, get something to eat, and we'll see you back here in three hours."
"Thanks. Any chance you could give me a quick capsule summary of this whole thing?"
"A rogue piece of Jove brainwashing technology is on the verge of falling into the hands of Sansha's Nation and we're the only ones who can stop it."
"Ah, right. Glad I asked."
"Welcome to the team," Berkhes said.
To discuss the story with other EVE players, click this link.
This is the first instalment in the Black Mountain chronicle series. There are also two prologues, "Post Mortem" and "The Greatest Joke", that introduce Black Mountain's protagonists. The next instalment is "Inertial"
As the inspector was leaving her apartment, he said, "Now, you'll be sure to report anything suspicious. If there really is someone on this facility causing problems, we need to catch him before the pirates do."
"I will, I promise," Atira said. She saw the man out, closed the door after him, and rested her forehead against its cool steel with a sigh.
A lot of off-ship pirates had been disappearing in this area, and while this development was little bother for the corporate forces who paid for the colonial crime monitoring, it was starting to draw the ire of the pirate factions, who had threatened to post more patrols and even to send in their own squads of ground enforcers. The Angels in particular had made some very pointed threats, and Atira had already had to deal with some of their people.
It was known that pirate factions routinely sent out recruiters for their cause - after a few years working on a mining colony, the average worker would easily be regaled by stories of life on pirate ships or even in their own earth-bound working forces - but they were usually found out and shown the door without much incident. They could be killed in-space, where they posed a valid threat, but not on the colonies. Different rules applied in the skies and on this earth. The inspector, funded by some of the main companies, was here to sort this out before things got even uglier.
Atira started getting ready for the evening shift. Equipment was kept quite basic on the mining colony, as complex electronic repair parts could be hard to get. Atira had air-pressured taser guns with settings that defaulted to stun but could be set to deadly levels, along with a retractable metal truncheon, a reinforced vest and other sundry equipment. She liked the tasers, which were attached to her hands and only useable by her, but they had to be aimed carefully and at a fairly stationary target. The truncheon, on the other hand, could be aimed and thrown with no hesitation. It contained ball bearings set on a tiny piston that, when the piece hit its target, would ram its momentum home even harder. A nasty feature, but the colonies were nasty places.
She pulled the truncheon from her belt, drew it out and hefted it, and tossed it a few times at a small, electronic scoreboard that hung in her living room. She got no bull's-eyes, but hit well enough that she'd have knocked a real-life target out. Satisfied with that warm-up, and certain that the evening wouldn't hold any more troubles, Atira headed out on patrol.
They strolled through the various bars, Atira and her partner. Each bar was kept as low-tech as everything else on the colony, although there were occasional pretensions to affluence. Some places leased bootleg Egones, special transmitters and receivers that played sound waves which only reached the customer's ears and that were specifically chosen to fit his tastes, or they had the similar eye-cast TV that required special ocular filters and was used mainly for sports events. These generally cropped up in the lower-level establishments, aimed as they were at people who preferred to drink alone. Most sane people tended to be put off by the sights of patrons nodding their heads to total silence or shouting sports tactics and grievances at empty air.
Other establishments relied on more corporeal attractions. It was paradoxical, but the more hands-on a place was, the more peaceful it tended to be. Due to the overwhelming amount of testosterone and aggression that suffused the mining colonies, strippers would only work in the high-level places where they could be provided with constant protection both at and off work. Prostitutes, of course, could be found everywhere, but a year or two of living here would wear them out faster than the mining drills, and leave them with similar looks.
Equipment in bars, likewise, was kept in good shape, and included everything from holoball to miniature mind clash fields, but repair costs were so high - particularly for anything electronic - that only the more higher-class establishments even bothered with it.
It was a hard business to be in, but highly profitable if you had the talent. People drank a lot here, and fought a lot, and the bars were in a constant race to attract the first type and repel the second.
Tonight, Atira trawled the lousier bars, the ones full of people with little to lose. It was hard to know who was new and who wasn't, since teams of workers came and went on a regular basis, but you did learn to recognize types. In one of the seediest she saw some people who definitely did not look like miners, and made a mental note to check up on them. She also noticed a man, well-dressed and apparently alone, who was quite calmly sipping on his drink and not doing anything much at all apart from apparently enjoying the ambience. She filed him away for further study as well and, realizing that her partner didn't seem to have noticed the undercover pirate recruiters, decided that she might have a chance of dealing with them later using her own methods.
The evening wore on, and they were headed towards the last bar of the evening when the inspector caught up with them. There was little traffic here, and the only sounds wafting out from the bar's doors were general chatter and the clinks of pleximugs on metal tables. No music could be heard, of course, nor any sports.
"Ah, I hoped I'd find you here," he said to the pair, then turned to Atira's partner and said, "Could I speak to you for a second, please? Alone."
Atira was annoyed at the slight, but then realized that the inspector actually seemed hesitant even to look at her, as if his gaze might betray something. She felt a pang of nervousness, but said, "Hey guys, I'll just head into the bar. Come in when you're done, okay?" and went in.
Again she noticed that calm, relaxed man, sitting at his own private table and sipping his drink. She was going to walk over and ask him a few questions, but at that moment the inspector walked into the bar and said to her, in a voice far too loud and tremulous, "I need to speak with you. Right now, please."
She stared in his face, and she realized that she'd been found out. They'd discovered a corpse, or her dogtags, or a witness, or something, some kind of ruination.
She was wondering exactly what to do when the calm, well-dressed man walked past her and up to the inspector, pulled out a gun, pointed it at the inspector's head and blew his brains out all over the floor.
***
It was the day after, and Atira was returning home from her shift. She was puzzled, tired and getting rather paranoid.
Nobody at work had remembered anything strange happening last night at the bars; no murders, nothing. They also did not remember any inspectors. When she'd quizzed her partner about it, he'd furrowed his brow and said, "Why? You expecting someone like that?"
The previous night, after the gunshot, the bar had fallen dead silent, its patrons too stunned to act. The gunman had turned to her and said, "Walk out," and she had obeyed, amazed by his initiative. The inspector's body wasn't the first whose death she'd had a hand in, though it was usually more direct, and she had stepped over his inert, mottled form without a second look. Around her, the patrons had held their breaths, the only movement at all coming from the seriously drunken Egone guys, who'd were lying down on their tables with their heads gently bobbing from side to side in tune to the silent music.
She'd spent the day on tenterhooks, expecting at any moment that someone would come in, point at her and scream her guilt. She had gone on as many open, circuitous colony rounds as she could, retracing her steps, trying to find some clue as to what had happened and what was coming, but had come up empty. Even the floor that had held the inspector's cooling body seemed free of blood and brains, though it was too grime-encrusted to tell for sure.
So when Atira finally made it home, she was not yet in the land of adrenaline backwash where relaxation reigns, but her exhaustion meant that she had long since stopped getting jittery at the least little thing. And the instant she walked in and closed the door behind her, her subconscious needed little effort to cut through the subdued noise of her thoughts.
Someone was already inside. It was the silence, and the way that the air felt deader than usual, and it meant the person was there for her.
She kept to her routine, taking off her shoes and jacket and unbuckling her belt, and pulled the metal truncheon from it. As she walked down the corridor and towards the corner to her living room, she crouched, tensed her legs and quietly extended the truncheon, then in one swift motion jumped past the corner, twisting in the air, and flung the truncheon at the human target she glimpsed there. As she landed she kept moving, rolling into a crouch and preparing her tasers for a high-voltage shot, but was stopped short when she realized who her target was.
In a corner of her living room, sitting in her easy chair, was the well-dressed man from last night. He held the truncheon, caught in mid-air inches from his face, but otherwise he didn't appear to have moved. He was smiling.
"Who are you? How did you get in here?" Atira demanded.
"Name's Alad, but you forgot the last question," he replied. "What did I take?"
She stared at him in incomprehension. Then realization dawned and she rushed into the bedroom, tore open the bedroom cupboard and grabbed for a box that was no longer there.
Alad stepped into the bedroom doorway. "It's gone. An impressive collection, I must say."
She contemplated whether to kill him on the spot. Risk as it might her chances of figuring out last night's murder, she couldn't afford to be blackmailed or indentured by any man.
But then she looked properly into his eyes, and the tiny fire she saw there stayed her hand. She'd only ever seen that kind of mad, unquenchable gaze from one other person. In the mirror.
He held up a glass of water. "Drink it."
She took the glass and downed it before he had a chance to say anything else.
Alad regarded her with clearly added interest. "You know," he said, "I was rather looking forward to baiting you a bit. Maybe saying something like, 'Oh, come on. What's the worst that could happen?' You've completely ruined that."
She grinned at him. Despite the oddity of the situation, she found herself rather liking the man. Besides, he'd caught her truncheon in mid-air, and blown a man's brains out in front of the world. Open defiance was probably the only realistic way she could take charge of the situation without compromising her own safety.
"What if there was poison in that glass?" he asked.
"Everyone dies someday," she replied sweetly. "Even you. Now, can I please get an explanation for all this?"
He pulled out a small box about the size of a fist and opened it. She looked at its contents and winced.
"What do you see?" he said.
"It's like a visual migraine. Flips through images that remind me of things I ... don't want to think of."
"So it doesn't make you want to see more?"
"I'd be happy if I never saw the damn thing again."
As he stared at her in apparent amazement, she added, "Right now, thanks."
He came to, and snapped the box shut.
"I appreciate your help the other night," she said. "And I can spot the work of a professional. So I'm going along with this for now. But I'm getting very curious."
"Coming soon, dear, coming soon. One more thing. Why didn't you fire these?" He pointed at her hands, on which the tasers were affixed.
"Taser shots are monitored. I didn't want a criminal investigation in this house, for obvious reasons, so I preferred to knock you out."
"Also," Alad added wryly, "You've got a very high faith in your aim. And possibly little fear of dying, maybe coupled with a hidden want to be found out."
She shrugged.
He said, "Well, I'm happy with what I've seen here. You're in."
"In what?"
"I can't tell you everything right now. Basically, we're building a team of people to go on a potentially dangerous mission."
"And you think I'm fit for this?"
"You have several natural gifts, of which this one," he tapped the box, "was the most impressive.
"Oh?"
"You're the first one not knocked on their ass by that," he said. "Anyway, if you do what we ask, and help us find what we're looking for, we'll erase your criminal record. Moreover, we'll eliminate all possible ties between you and the acts you've committed. If you want to restart your life somewhere else, we'll even throw in a facial remolding to get you going, along with a substantial monetary reward. You'll be rich as a capsuleer."
She walked into the living room, sat down in her easy chair, and stared at him. After a while she said, "That's quite an offer. And I'll be working with other people of similar talents?"
"Broadly speaking, yes. You'll all be working under codenames, incidentally. Yours is Draea."
"How will you keep control?"
"Leave that to us."
"Right, because you're such good planners."
He hesitated at that. "What do you mean?"
She rested her head on her hand and looked at him askew. "Like lightning from a blue sky, some inspector arrives. His corp is worried that all those naughty, naughty pirates who've been disappearing in the area have been doing it on my watch. Lo and behold, his questions lead him directly to me, just in time for you to come in and save the day. You rotten cheats," she said, with about as much amusement as reproach.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her hands, tasers aimed, and said, "If you are going to say anything other than how clever I am, be warned that I can fire two shots from each hand, and unless you're intending to catch them all with your teeth, you're going to have a real bad time."
"Does this mean you refuse our offer?" he asked.
"Hell, no," she said, lowering her hands. "I'd much rather work with people I can't trust. It makes everything so much simpler, and I can focus purely on myself for a change. When do we start?"
"As soon as you're packed. I'll wait outside." Alad headed towards the exit, and on his way out added, in a tone barely loud enough for her to hear, "We may have to move you up a division."
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Excena Foer, the star known as Aura, had an innocuous start to her show business career, being somewhat of a dancer prodigy. Her parents, Gallente workers both, strongly encouraged her on this path, and by the time she was fourteen years old she was already dancing professionally. Their dominance over her life and career rankled, though, and when she turned sixteen she broke away and started hanging out with the Mind Clash crowd; intense men whose talents and self-control on the digital field often belied volatile personalities and bloated egos. She later admitted having had some rough experiences with the more forceful competitors, but has consistently refused to elaborate. As it turned out, she was quite adept at the game herself, joining in the amateur leagues and using her natural talents for body control and utter inward focus to crush the competition.
***
I am here to speak about Cathedral of the Oceans, and The Book of Hours, and how they are one and the same.
It is a beautiful poem, in all its versions, and for that I am infinitely thankful, for poetry is not beautiful except by accident. You put everything into it you can, and then you let it go, trusting in your unconscious parts, the places where your eyes don't go, to have prepared it sufficiently for public scrutiny.
***
It ended, as all things do, in ruin. Her name had become more and more entwined with Johaan Carve, one of the leading professional competitors, and when he was caught injecting psychotropics - forbidden in Mind Clash, since the risk of panic attacks and breakdowns is a very real part of the sport - and forced to leave the league in disgrace, she was dropped as well. Excena, who at that point had dedicated her life to the Mind Clash games, took it very hard. She kept dating Carve, but Clashers without fights are a self-destructive breed, and a descent into addiction and darkness soon followed.
She spent a few years floating around, living off past fame and unreliable friends. Every now and then there'd be a slight resurgence in popularity - most notoriously the segment Scope did on her, where she made a remarkably loquacious and thoroughly intoxicated appearance - but by and large, she was sliding further and further into hazy obscurity and disintegrating health.
***
Does the poem's beauty stem from the poet, then? Not in the least. People want us to be saints, but in all honesty, nobody who transcribes God's music can be a good person, not if they want to traverse the whole scale. You can be kind, but you can not be good, and even so, your kindness is not a thing in and of itself; it lives and reacts like an animal. Excena has been kind, Excena has been very kind to me, and if hearing that surprises you, you should reflect on the myriad of ways in which a young, energetic woman with more vigor than sense - and she'll forgive me for this, because she is kind - could make misery for an old man with whose life she has become intertwined. Excena has been kind, and she has told truths. Do not expect us to be good.
***
This all changed when she encountered the works of Itzak Barah, Amarr's foremost religious poet. While stories differ on exactly when she fell under the spell of his poetry and how swiftly it happened (Excena herself persistently maintains that she loved it right from the start, but Carve, who she was intermittently seeing at that point, has claimed that she read only two pages of Barah's Other People's Lives before throwing it at his head), it is undeniable that she ended up taking a keen interest in it, to the point where she even attended reading sessions by local Amarrian scholars. Before eventually being asked to leave, as her presence there was supposedly beginning to mislead the local young clergymen, Excena had already built up a reputation for piercing insights into Barah's poetry and for her ability to restate his points in Gallentean.
***
As an aside, we were having dinner recently at a very nice restaurant, and we were accosted by someone. The man called Excena some vicious names for having dared to translate Cathedral, and he said that she had murdered the poem. In one swift movement she rose, grabbed him by the neck, kicked the side of his knee and spun him around, slamming him onto his back on our table. She grabbed her steak knife, clicked it up to full power and plunged it into the table right beside the man's neck, nailing him to the table by his robe. And she looked deep into his eyes and said, "That fire you feel is nothing to mine. Nothing."
***
Her breakthrough came when she translated Barah's opus, Cathedral of the Oceans, from its native Amarrian to her own Gallentean, publishing it under the title The Book of Hours. She would later claim that what had helped her accomplish this momentous task was her Mind Clash experience and its lessons of absolute focus and concentration, lessons which had helped her survive through years of self-abuse and narcotics.
***
So we know that a poet may be kind but not good, and by the same token, of course, he cannot be evil. Can we say what he is?
A poet is a chronicler. He is a recorder, trying his best to capture the music in letters. And that's wrong, entirely wrong. A poet must transcribe far more than that, not be content with the rhythms of his language.
He is a conduit, piping God's dreams to dead words. And that, too, is wrong. A poet must never presume to be the connection between God and Man.
He is a creator, showing the world how he experiences it, and thus creating it to himself. Good heavens, no. A poet has more humility than that.
Are there other opinions? Thousands. Most of them are wrong at some level, or they conflict, and yet even those at complete odds with one another fail to produce a single acceptable definition between them. Amazing.
And yet there are those here in this very room who would say that by discounting these definitions, of poet as chronicler, conduit and creator, I have failed; that they are true. And of course they are. In someone's ears they will be, but in mine they are not.
It is in fact impossible to nail down what a poet is, and thus entirely futile to claim that someone is not. We do not even play the same song; how can we possibly claim to know the mind of every orchestrator?
You may look at someone and say, "Yes, he is a poet" but you cannot look at someone and say, "No, he is not." Whether his words have meaning to you is, of course, a different matter, but that understanding is not his concern; it is yours, and we put the onus on the reader to truly read the poems, to glean their meanings.
***
Her translation turned her into a star. It was almost universally hailed as a masterpiece, and had religious scholars up in arms. It was a complete reworking of Barah's poem to such a degree as to render it almost unrecognizable, throwing out all the imagery, pacing and symbolism in favor of original, Gallente-centered renderings, but which nonetheless produced a piece that was remarkably similar in spirit and approach. Barah himself gave his explicit approval of the effort, and in a famous speech given to an assembly of various Amarr and Amarr-affiliated religious leaders he declared that not only was Excena's translation a near-perfect transcription of the spirit behind his original version, but that she may not be castigated, threatened or assailed for her writing. At the end of his speech he cemented this opinion by declaring a Kaoli on her person and profession, indicating that any attack on Excena's poetry or Excena's ability to express it would be considered an attack on himself and, under religious law, would be avenged as such. It was a risky move, one that could have had Barah himself put on the deathlists, but it worked, and the Kaoli was grudgingly accepted by the religious majority.
***
If I could write a poem without words, I would, but any time I look around I realize that God has beaten me to it; and so I commit my humble failures in the trust that they will be received in good heart by the reader. For poetry is - and here is yet another incorrect, insufficient description of the art, from a humble mortal trying to convey the godlike - poetry is a cooperation between writer and reader, for just as much as the writer attempts to float the heavens down, the reader must rise to meet them. Have you ever tried levitating? It is most difficult, I assure you.
***
Excena went on numerous well-publicized speaking tours, where she would read out sections of Cathedral and of other, lesser-known poems she had translated, and would speak at length of her experiences with Amarrian poetry. In stark contrast to Barah himself, who was known as a soft-spoken and calm man, Excena was a forthright and sometimes contentious speaker, entirely unafraid to offend or disagree with her listeners. The Gallente universities loved her.
And so it went, her scholastic renown rising, until the night where a group of religious zealots gained access to her drinks at the lecture's backstage room, and poisoned them with esophageal nanomachinery. The vicious little critters were programmed to gobble up a very specific kind of white mucus membrane, the type that can be found in only one place through the whole human body. The vocal cords.
***
Should we treat the poetry as religious screed? Absolutely not. A man of faith must be the eternal doubter, because that's the only way to distinguish God's truth through the endless barrage of lies we're faced with, but not only that; he must possess the capacity to look at the lies, look straight at them, understand them for what they are - challenges, not of your faith, but of the way you view your faith - evaluate them and understand why they question your beliefs ... and then let go of them. All they do is distract you. Do my poems have meanings to you? I'm honored. Do Excena's? She would be honored as well. But if they do not, cast them aside. Do not treat them as affronts to your faith; treat them as lies and let them go.
***
The world was outraged. The group of zealots was entirely unrepentant, claiming that they had not interfered with Excena's ability to create poetry and thus not violated the Kaoli, but soon after they found themselves hauled in by Speakers of Truth and stricken off the Book of Records. Meanwhile, offers of support for Excena poured in from all ends of the universe, from scholar and journeyman alike. She was offered free health care, but the esophageal nanomachines had done a thorough job, their only remains the gossamer tendrils that hung limply on the inside of her scabbed throat. Regrowing them, and training her body to use the new set, would have taken her years, even decades of painful treatment. Cloning was not an option, either: Aside from the legal difficulty of using that procedure for regeneration - it was and remains a contentious issue in every society - it was both dangerous and expensive, and a new body would have invalidated the Kaoli and given the zealots free rein to kill her outright. Excena herself was against it, too, as she felt it would signal a surrender, a defeat in whatever battle she was engaged in with these people.
***
Yes, the poem is completely different. Yes, it's now Gallentean, unrecognizable to anyone who reads it solely as an Amarrian and not as a human being. The scene where the man drags the suitcase in the snow, so that its wheels don't even roll, and it just scrapes up the snow, that scene didn't belong anymore. Its replacement, the man who discovers another man in the street, crying, and it slowly dawns on him what the person did - it fits. It's beautiful. It ties everything else together, and if you excised that particular scene, you couldn't make any sense of the rest; not the imagery, not the pacing, not anything. Only a poet, whatever else they may be, can form and reform like that.
***
So she used the proceeds from her tours, and the money from various donors, and had a voicebox installed. The procedure was quite rare, not only because of how incredibly agonizing the first few months could be, but of its failure rate. An astonishing 90% of recipients never gained full control over the boxes, and a full 50% could hardly use them at all. But then, 0% were ex-Mind Clash fighters and professional dancers.
In one week she could make the box hum, a sound reminiscent of a rock crusher in the slave colonies. In a month, she could speak three consecutive words; in two months, three sentences. In half a year she was speaking fluently, her only issues a lack of control over volume and pitch. And nine months after the operation, she was back to normal and beyond it, having achieved a measure of control over her voice that she had never before enjoyed. No one else had ever adapted so well to a voicebox, and it was not even thought theoretically possible. The only lasting remnant of the accident was a tendency for her voice to sound metallic, but Excena later admitted that she loved the effect and had intentionally kept her voice like that.
***
No drugs, and no divine inspiration. The first is the leaden darkness weighing down your eyes and the second is the wind blowing through your hands. The reader can tell when drugs have been at work, because even if by some lucky coincidence the language happens to glow, the rhythms will be dull, like lead slabs toppled onto a pavement. As for inspiration, it touches you every now and then - usually when you're least ready for it - but if you haven't put in your time, you will be unable to channel it. You will be a broken circuit, giving out only noise.
It's persistence, is what it is. Persistence and tenacity, and endless practice. This poem and this ability did not arise from nowhere, and as much as Excena would like us to believe otherwise, she has been doing this for a long time. Perhaps not in the way she does it now, perhaps only in secret, but speaking of her as a poet it can well be said that all her efforts, seen and unseen, have safely and inexorably led her here.
***
Her persistence and strength of character, and her newfound vocal ability, made her a star for the third time. She was inundated with offers for public speaking, for voiceovers, even for small speaking parts in the reels. A lifetime of conflict had left her worn and aged beyond her years, which prevented her from graduating to full movie stardom, but for a while she was a fixture in the Gallentean art reel circuit.
And there came a point where, by her own admission, she started at last to think of the future. At each stage of her life she had been enraptured by the present, and while she had made a good living, she had also been entirely unconcerned about saving any of it for later years. So when that one offer, the most lucrative one of all, finally came around, she grabbed it without hesitation. It's well known that any job to do with capsuleers will bring in respectable money for the lucky, and this one was no exception. Her metallic, worn voice was perfect for the task of voiceovers for the AI on capsuleer ships. The immortal Aura was born.
***
So we wait and hope. We wait and see where we go from here. Will she succeed? I certainly expect so. She's a strong woman, and she will go places I have never even approached. But she will not go there unsupported.
As should be utterly clear from this little talk, I believe in Excena, in her talents and in her judgment. I give my complete sanction for her translation, and while I cannot make anyone else do the same - we are all of us readers, and all of us the listeners of the silent music - I can ensure that they do not stand in her way.
By the power vested in me by my acknowledged status as an Amarrian religious poet, by virtue of my unblemished record both religious and secular, and before the eyes of slaves, equals, royalty and the endless God, I declare a Kaoli, a fellowship of paths, for Excena Foer and myself. Let her never be silenced. Let her never be less than a poet, burned pure in the eyes of God. Let her voice ascend to the stars.
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Nedar watched through his screen as the enemy ship burst into flames. It was done; it was finally done. This Serpentis meetup point would be safe, at least for a while.
He turned to his second-in-command, an intent and serious man named Raze, and said, "There are two encrypted messages waiting on my personal line. One is to Command, the other is not. Send them both." Raze nodded, gave a sharp salute, and left.
***
"Sir, sir, look! Reinforcements!"
"Oh, thank heavens," Nedar said. The capsuleer was pounding their ships. Half of the man's drones were gone, thanks to Eron's sacrifice, and his ship looked like it was falling apart, but he was still tearing Nedar and his compatriots to pieces.
In popped three Serpentis ships, providing webifyers, warp scramblers and target jammers.
"Tell them to go directly for the pilot. We'll deal with the rest of these drones."
Raze got on the intercom. The ships set course for the capsuleer's frigate.
***
Eron came in close, as was his usual tactic, and the capsuleer started to web his ship. Over the intercom, the crew aboard Nedar's vessel heard Eron's feedback. "All right, I'm going to need some backup once I start rotating him, and-... wait, what ... I can't break his lock! I can't break his lock!"
As Nedar watched on the overhead display, the capsuleer released a group of drones, all of whom went directly for Eron's ship. The capsuleer was still firing at Eron, past his shields and now into armor, burning it away and getting close to the hull.
"Focus on the drones, people!" Nedar said. "We let them loose, we can forget about winning this."
"And Eron, sir?" Raze asked in a quiet voice.
"Eron will buy us some time," Nedar replied, equally quietly.
In front of them, the capsuleer and his drones continued to rend Eron's ship apart, until at last it exploded in a fiery blaze.
***
They were being pummelled. Overhead, the ship's speakers crackled. It was Fremer. "I'm going down!" he shouted.
Nedar switched the view over to Fremer's ship. It was falling to bits under the capsuleer's fire, but stayed on course.
"Fremer, get out of there," Nedar said.
"No. No retreat," Fremer said.
"I mean it, get out! We'll deal with the brass later."
"Sorry, man," Fremer said. "Tell Marsha I love her."
Nedar had to choke back his emotion. "I ... will. Absolutely."
As his friend went up in blazes, Nedar turned on the intercom again and said, "Eron, you're lagging behind. Get your ass in there right now and deal with it."
The speakers crackled a "Sir!" in response.
***
We're about to head into battle, Nedar wrote, and I cannot go any further with you. I am so sorry. He was sitting in his cramped quarters, his frigate en route to the meetup point. If the capsuleer's combat pattern held, he'd be coming there shortly after. Intelligence indicated that all they needed was one proper victory, one good offensive, and the assailant would never return.
We are going alone into these dark places, and it has become too dangerous for anyone to follow. After we're done here, if we make it out alive at all, the game changes. I will be envied and hated. There will be people out for my blood and I cannot, I will not, let you get caught in the crossfire. I'm going to be associating with some very dangerous people from now on, and if they find out that you're connected to me, they might decide to harm you. I couldn't bear having that happen. Take care, Aredia.
He pondered what else to add, but felt completely empty. They'd had some good times, and she'd been of great help to him, but that was about it.
He saved the letter, ensured that it was encrypted and prepared it for delivery along with a status note to Command, but did not send it. Once they'd emerged victorious from the battle he'd have them transmitted, but not until then.
***
It was the day of the attack, in the docking ports, and Raze came running after Nedar. "Sir!" he shouted, "Wait, sir!"
"Raze, for gods' sakes," Nedar said. "Use my name. We're going into combat in a few hours, and the last thing anyone wants to hear before dying is an honorific."
"Sorry about that," Raze said, trying to catch his breath. "Got your message this morning. Just finished the tech runs. You were right. Current redirected in an engine subsection. I'd never have caught it if you hadn't asked for deep checks."
Nedar rubbed his eyes. "Great. Wonderful. Just what we needed."
"Who was it?" Raze asked.
Nedar glared at him. "What makes you think I know?"
"You asked for these checks, so I know you suspected something. Who was responsible?"
"Does it matter?" Nedar said. "We found the error, Raze."
"It matters and you know it. We don't have time to report this, not now, with all the bureaucracy and issues that'd arise. I'm not giving up my chance to go after the capsuleer, and I'm sure as hell not going to do it with a cutthroat flying somewhere beside me."
"Look, we ... ah, hell," Nedar said. "It was Eron. Or someone from his crew. I don't know if he'd had the knowhow to do it himself, but he'll have given the order."
"No bloody news there," Raze said, his face red from anger. "Man's been at your throat for ages."
"He has. I just wish it hadn't come to this," Nedar said.
"Well, it has. And now we need to retaliate."
"What?"
"Anyone who does something like that doesn't deserve to live. I'm sorry, but it's that simple. I'm going over there, and I'm going to break his ECMs. He won't find out until he starts them."
"Raze-"
"You know I can do this," Raze said. "I've got engineering background, I run all the checks on our ship, and I know exactly what to do with an ECM to make it conk out. All I need is your permission."
Nedar leaned up against the metal wall, and looked up at silent stars. "All right," he said at last. "All right. Do it."
***
As he returned to his quarters, thinking about the attack tomorrow morning, Nedar noticed Fremer, and walked over to him.
"Hey there," Nedar said.
"Oh, hey. You still up?"
"Yeah, had to take care of some business. Listen, uh ... about what you mentioned earlier, with the guys. Are you quite serious about this?"
Fremer scratched the back of his head. "Yes. As a matter of fact I am."
They started walking towards Fremer's section of the compound. "When on earth did this happen?" Nedar asked him.
"Well, quite recently."
"Were you drunk? Tell me you were drunk."
"Mmm, well, uh ... no. No, I wasn't," Fremer said in a reproachful tone.
Nedar stopped, and grabbed him by the shoulders. "Please tell me you're not going to see this woman again. Please. For the love of all that is holy, please."
Fremer stammered, avoided Nedar's gaze, and scratched his neck again. "Her name is Marsha," he uttered at last.
"Oh, for gods' sakes!" Nedar yelled, and stalked away from him.
As he walked towards his own quarters, he heard Fremer call to him, "I've never felt anything quite like this!"
"Neither would if, if I'd done what you have!" Nedar yelled back, before he crossed out of earshot.
***
Nedar had just returned from the docking ports, and was settling down in his cabin when he received a message. It was encrypted, and not from Command. He smiled, and opened it.
It was from Aredia, who wished him good luck on his mission, and said she looked forward to hearing from him whenever he had time. She mentioned that he shouldn't worry, for even if everything would go wrong he'd still have her, and she'd use her contacts to ensure that his career wouldn't get derailed. She ended the letter by mentioning the butterflies she got when thinking of him, and said, with a little wink, "I just hope your wife doesn't find out."
He smiled again and deleted the message, then started writing a new one to Raze.
***
"We need to talk," Eron said.
"Sure," Nedar replied. He was on his way back to the living quarters, after an evening spent with the captains of the frigates set for next day's mission. He felt relaxed and calm, and had managed to go a full fifteen minutes without thinking of Fremer's revelation.
"Your wife is meeting with the Furies," Eron said.
Nedar kept walking, but slowed down his pace. "What are you saying?"
"Everyone knows what this mission will do for our careers, and I don't blame anyone who wants to take advantage of that. But this is wrong, Nedar. This is deeply wrong."
"How so?" Nedar said, in as neutral a tone as he could muster.
"These women are absolute terrors. They've held countless families in an iron grip for as long as I can remember. Now they've lost one from their ranks and finally have a weak spot, and we should be taking advantage of that."
"And I'm not doing that?"
"Damnit, will you stop with the questions! We can make a change here, Nedar. We truly can. But if your wife joins up with the Furies then it's all going to turn to ruin."
"Eron, are you honestly saying that the Serpentis should have revolt and treachery over strong leadership?"
Eron spat. "Not even the Serpentis deserve these women."
"Be that as it may, I'm not changing a thing. Maybe Scyldie is talking to them, maybe she isn't. But if she joins their ranks, I certainly wouldn't be disappointed."
"We will have to have a long talk about this after the mission is over," Eron said.
"There is nothing to talk about!" Nedar yelled at him. "This is how it is, Eron! Either you accept that or you don't, but your opinion on this matter really doesn't count for anything at all."
Eron said, "I'm sorry to hear that. I guess I'll just have to make it count," and stalked off.
Nedar stared after him, slowly clenching and unclenching his fists, until he was out of sight. He stood there for a long while, thinking in silence under the aimless gaze of the stars. Eventually he turned and walked off, not to the living quarters but to the docking ports. He had some currents to redirect.
***
The captains were sitting together, shooting the breeze and trying to relax. The night before battle always gave people the jitters, and this was worse than they'd ever faced. Regular pirate crews didn't usually pick fights with capsuleers - that task was best left to their factions' own small, elite cadre of pod pilots, or to the unlucky few assigned that duty as punishment - but for a mortal captain it was one of the best ways to win glory and respect in his organization. This particular capsuleer was considered a low-grade threat to their interests, an amateur at best, but an amateur capsuleer was still an incredibly dangerous creature. It was a secret surprisingly well-kept from the general public of the pirate factions that a head-to-head encounter with a capsuleer of even moderate talents was practically a death sentence.
So at one point, they started talking about girls they'd slept with. Nedar, piously married, refused to comment.
"Oh, come on," Eron said with something approaching rebuke. "You've got a girl on the side, I'm sure."
Nedar just grinned at that, and Eron grinned back. The conversation moved on, but to Nedar's mind, Eron stared at him for a little too long.
"Okay, okay, here," someone said. "What's the oldest you ever slept with?"
"Oh, come on!" said another.
"No, no, it's good," Eron commented. "Let's go with it." He laughed, and Nedar laughed with him.
"I've got one," Fremer said. The others immediately stopped talking, and listened. Fremer, that guileless animal, was a good captain but had about as much social intuition as a Fedo. He wasn't known to ever have been with a woman, and most people present would have bet their right eye that he never would.
"When was this?" someone asked in disbelief.
"Just recently, in fact," Fremer replied, little twitches of his mouth forming ephemeral smiles. When no one could think of anything to say, he added, "Eighty two."
Eron choked on his drink. Nedar felt his jaw drop.
"... what?" someone managed, at last.
Fremer sat up straight, defiant and blushing furiously. "Eighty two."
There was utter, dead silence in the room. Nedar could feel his heartbeat. Someone finally asked, "So, uh, was she hot?"
"She was eighty two!" Fremer said in exasperation, and his voice sounded raspy and frail.
And there they might have sat for all eternity, overcome with the vast thoughts of human endeavour, but Nedar couldn't resist. "So ... was it alright?"
"Oh yeah," Fremer said and smiled like an idiot. "She was very gentle."
***
He was in a call with his wife.
"So how's the mood?" she asked.
"It's pretty good. We're about to meet up for some drinks, chat a bit, you know. Lose the stress."
"Does that even work?"
"Not really. It passes the time, keeps us from getting even more nervous."
"How do you feel about the mission?" Scyldie asked him.
"About the same as you do going to the Furies, I suspect," he said with an exaggerated tremor, which she laughed at. "I love your laughter," he said.
"Thanks," she said demurely, and added, "Anyway, it's all for the good. We both succeed and we'll be on our way to power and happiness. No more insane, crazy risk missions. No more seeing that bitch Aredia."
Now it was his turn to laugh. "She's been very useful," he said, in a teasing tone of voice. "And you know she's going to be vital if either one of us gets burned."
"Oh, I'm sure she's been useful," Scyldie replied, "in all sorts of ways."
"Shame that we can't take her with us," Nedar said
"You have made sure that she won't be coming after us?" Scyldie admonished.
Nedar hesitated. "I will. I'll write her a letter and send it once the mission's a success," he said.
"I don't meddle in the way you conduct your affairs, such as they are," Scyldie said in a teasing tone, "But are you sure that once you break things off, she won't reveal everything?"
"Nah, it'll be fine. I'll write the letter in a sincere tone that'll throw her off, even if she does suspect the truth. And I'll hint quite heavily that revealing the tryst would get her into serious trouble. If she ignores that, I'll just have to have her killed."
"Pity," Scyldie said. "By the way, you really haven't told me anything about the mission, except for the target. I'm dead curious. I hope you're well prepared."
"Don't be so nosy, nosy girl," he replied in the same teasing tone, but he felt the darkness behind his voice. "It'll be fine."
"You sure, baby?" she asked.
"I have to be," he said with a sigh.
"All right," Scyldie said. "Take good care, and we'll be in touch tomorrow night."
"You bet," he said and impulsively added, "I love you. You're like a summer breeze in this cold and weary life."
She was stopped short by that, but at last replied, "I love you too, honey. I'm grateful every day for having found you, and for the fact that you became a pilot and not a writer," and hung up while he was still laughing.
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It was sunny, and rather warm despite the encroaching fall. Scyldie, having been cleared past the guards at the iron gates, walked through the yard and up to the house's front door. She stood there for a moment, closing her eyes and drawing a deep breath.
The door was made of metal, and separated in the middle with a line that curved slightly at the ends. This kind of explicit ornamentation was common among the elite of the Sarpati extended family, who liked to flaunt their loyalty and heritage pride. On this planet, under Serpentis control, it never hurt to advertise your allegiance.
Scyldie's knock reverberated through the door but was met with no response. For a moment she wondered if all this trouble had been for nothing, if she was going to be turned away at the final checkpoint. It would be a bitter relief.
Then the door opened, sliding soundlessly apart. Inside was quite a homely apartment, full of furniture that looked like it had been in the possession of the same family for a number of generations. Scyldie walked in. The door closed behind her.
The smell of tea drifted in from a nearby room, as did murmured voices. Scyldie slowly walked in that direction.
It turned out to be the parlour, where two women sat drinking from thin porcelain cups. One was settling nicely into her middle age, while the other looked as old and worn as the furniture.
There was a third chair, and a small table that held a tray of biscuits, a tea pot and an extra cup. The two women did not look her way when she entered, but finished the muted conversation they were having. They then put their cups down on the table, folded their hands in their laps, and stared at Scyldie.
She was about to say something, but checked herself and stayed quiet. Eventually the younger of the two women, who Scyldie knew was called Verdinia, spoke in a matronly voice.
"Do take a seat, dear," she said. "Would you like something to drink?"
Scyldie sat, picked up the empty cup and held it towards the pot. "Please," she said. Verdinia leaned over, picked up the pot and poured. From the corner of her eye, Scyldie saw the other woman stare at her.
It felt like a bit of an anticlimax, after all the layers of security, bribes and sweet-talk she'd had to get through. But then, Scyldie thought, these women would be well aware of the effort needed to see them. Besides, she had a good feeling that behind those facades lay steel jaws and steel minds, and her intuition rarely led her wrong.
"Nice weather outside," Verdinia said.
"So far," Scyldie replied and, before she could stop herself, added, "We're in for a storm."
The two women glanced at one of the windows. Golden sunrays pierced the curtains and lit the room.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Scyldie added quickly.
"Wasn't your fault," the other woman replied. Her name was Aursula, and she reminded Scyldie of an old schoolteacher. "And it was a while back now. We've gotten over it."
"I'm sure you have." Scyldie took a sip of the tea. It was hot, and very strong. "I mention it both for its own sake, because I think that paying one's respects is important, and also because I don't want my proposition to seem inappropriate."
"I'm sure whatever proposition you make will be quite appropriate, dear," Verdinia said, not quite disguising the amusement in her voice.
Scyldie ignored the sarcasm, took a deep breath and said, "There are two of you. There used to be three, before the accident. I want to fill that gap." When the two women didn't comment, she plunged onward. "I know who you are. I know that your husbands are men of power in this organization, but that they haven't quite risen to the top and so neither have you. I know you've had a fall from grace as of late, what with you being diminished. I can help you with that."
"Do you feel diminished?" Aursula asked Verdinia, ignoring Scyldie.
"Not at the moment," Verdinia replied. "Should I?"
"Apparently."
"Well, I'll be."
Scyldie's nerve finally broke. "Look, I want to help you two, and as it happens I've got quite a lot to offer. My husband is currently on a very important mission, and once he's done he'll be in a position to take us all to the top. I'm not a liar, nor pretending I'm someone I'm not."
Aursula retorted, "You use a lot of fancy words, young lady, and people who use fancy words tend to be hiding behind them. I see no reason why we should give you anything."
"Except a cup of tea," Verdinia interjected. "One must be civil."
"Yes, of course," Aursula said. She took a sip from her own cup, then put it back on the table and, turning to Scyldie, laced her fingers together on the chair's armrest and said, "First of all, I'm sure you are who you are, whoever that is. I believe the last person who tried to gain entry on false pretences found themselves leaving this house in ... three, was it?" She glanced to Verdinia.
"Four, dear," Verdinia said.
"Four pieces, thank you. In separate bags. Second, though, I'm not sure you even know what you're talking about. Have we advertised for help? Have we actively sought your assistance, your interference in the way we run our business?"
"You didn't have to. Word among those who know is that you're already one person short."
"Do you believe everything you're told?" Aursula asked.
Scyldie fixed her with a glance that she hoped appeared more confident than she felt. "Only the things worth hearing," she said.
Aursula fell silent at that.
"What have you heard, dear?" Verdinia said, while dipping a biscuit into the tea.
Scyldie reached for another biscuit, nibbled on it a bit, then said to Verdinia, "Your husband is the premier accountant in the firm, and as everyone knows, accountants for people like us are worth their weight in megacyte."
"I like how you said 'people like us'. That was nice. I feel closer to you already," Verdinia said.
"But his problem is that he has nowhere to go. He's risen to the top of a section that's largely self-contained, and his power stems from the insight and inside knowledge he has over the workings of the organization, not from his own authority. If he gains allies in other sections then he can become immensely powerful, but if he's left without enough friends then his enemies won't think twice about muscling him out."
"My goodness," Verdinia said, and dipped her biscuit into the tea again.
"Your husband, on the other hand," Scyldie said, turning to Aursula, "is very much in a position to command other people. The way he managed to bridge the gap between our administration and internal security departments is quite admirable, and I know he has the respect both of his men and of Raikanen and Tuvan. But that isn't enough."
"Is anything enough with you?" Aursula said, but without much spirit.
"Since he's caught between those two men, both of whom are some of the highest-ranking individuals we have, he's rendered powerless. His own authority doesn't extend outside of his own cadre, and while he's got some leeway in how to interpret the commands he's given from higher up, he's basically their Slaver hound. He says what he is told to say. He's managed to maintain this appearance of power because of the loyalty he's gained with the troops during his years of fighting for us, but with the new people coming in, all that his presence will engender is resentment. He doesn't have their loyalty, and he's in no position to gain it."
Scyldie took another bite of the biscuit, forced herself to pause a bit. The other two waited, looking unimpressed but listening nonetheless.
"Back when you were three, that was different. You had someone else, a woman who was a little older than I was, who could stay in touch with the newer recruits and constantly refresh your power base. Now, I'm not implying that she wasn't good enough, or that her actions somehow landed you in this predicament-"
"Yes, you are," Aursula said.
"But she made some mistakes, and you stopped rising. And now with her loss you risk a fall. As much as you may want to return to the old days with her, that's not an option anymore. Word among the young recruits is that you're on your way out, and while that can be changed, it has to be dealt with in an active manner."
"You seem to be an active person yourself," said Aursula. "Even if you can't read the clouds for naught."
"I look at things the way they are, including the weather I should add, and not the way I'd like them to be," Scyldie said. "I use that dichotomy for motivation."
"Do you now, dear?" Verdinia said.
"I mean, I see what I want, and I work hard to get it. I don't sit and wait for things to get better. The world doesn't owe me anything."
"Damn right," Aursula said, nodding.
Verdinia, other the other hand, did not nod, nor say anything. She merely stared at Scyldie for a little too long. At last she added, "Well, it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it? You can take a single event and think of it in one of two ways, good or bad. The experience is all in your mind. It may appear terrible to others, but to you it could be the start of something good."
Scyldie filed that away for later thought. "Maybe, but more often than not it's far too tempting to look at life through rose-tinted glasses, instead of the cold and harsh place it's turning into."
"Do you have any children?" Verdinia asked.
Scyldie blushed, and said, "No. We haven't quite gotten to that part yet."
"I suspected as much, dear. Now, tell us what it is you believe you can do for us."
Scyldie shifted in her chair. This was the selling point; this was the moment of truth. "My husband is a pilot for the Serpentis forces," she said. "Top of his class, excel and merits, crew is loyal to the death. He's very popular with the other captains as well."
"Good for him," Verdinia murmured.
"He has that mix of leadership and communication that makes for a good agent in our organization," Scyldie said. "He's ready to stand up for his co-pilots when needed, but he knows when to stay seated. People look to him for validation, and accept his authority even when he doesn't have it. And nobody dislikes him, or says so outright, at least."
"Sounds like a good man," Verdinia said. "I hope you two have a nice life together. But why are you telling us this?"
"Because we can help each other. My husband needs better contacts, particularly after he's done with this mission. Otherwise he might stagnate, or worse, run the risk of associating with the wrong people. And he can swing the younger recruits your way, persuade them that your husbands are the ones they should support and respect."
"So we're not the wrong people?" Aursula said. "Well, that's a relief."
Scyldie bit her tongue, took a slow breath and said, "I think it's time you took in a third woman in this coven, and it should be me."
Verdinia had a sip of tea, smiled prettily at Scyldie and said to her, "No, dear. I think it's time to kill you."
In the stunned silence that followed, Verdinia said, "You clearly know a lot about this organization, and yet in your hubris you think that it needs you. I remember that feeling, from years past. But you've now put yourself in a position where you've revealed your intentions without having a shred of proof that you can back them up. What happens if your husband fails in this important mission of his? You know full well that we can't associate with failures. So you get turned down, and you become our enemy, likely as not to make your husband poison our cause. We can't have that, dear. We can't have that at all."
"We don't even know if he'll make it back alive, let alone successful," Aursula said. "Unless we're sure of his position and power, we couldn't possibly consider offering you a place here. What would we do if he screws up and loses the loyalty of his people? Should we keep you around as a pet?"
"No, of course not," Scyldie said. "He won't lose. I know it. He won't. And he can be very valuable to you. We both can."
"Look, dear, I'll be completely honest with you. We do keep tabs on some of the young officers and their families, to make sure that they don't get too big for their shoes and try to fill ours instead. And now we know that you're an extremely ambitious young woman, one who managed to find her way to us. We can't have you begrudging us our position, which you will if your husband achieves anything less than stellar success and we end up turning you down. It's nothing personal; simply the rules of the game."
"Look, my husband is going to be fine! He knows what he's doing, and I have faith in him."
"Faith isn't enough," Aursula said.
"Then call it intuition. Or, I don't know, deeper knowledge."
"There's a lot of things you claim to know," Aursula said.
"I kno- ... yes. But that is how it is."
"What assignment was it that your husband was going out on, dear? The secret one that brought all this about."
When Scyldie hesitated, Verdinia continued, "You know that we can find this out. I'd rather it be from you."
"Well ... he's been sent after someone who keeps going to our meet-up points and attacking our ships."
"Someone?"
"A capsuleer," Scyldie said.
The two older women looked at each other, then back at Scyldie, but said nothing. For a moment they all sat in total stillness, broken only by the noise of the wind trying to force its way through the windows.
"You didn't mention that, dear," Verdinia said in a gentler tone.
"I didn't realize it mattered," Scyldie said, adding a slight tone of pique to disguise her sudden nervousness. "He was quite unwilling to tell me about the particulars."
"Tell you what," Aursula said. "When you next hear from your husband, see if he's in one piece, then contact us again. Someone who can take on capsuleers is someone we would be interested in, success or not."
Scyldie nodded and stood up. "I think it's best I go now."
"I agree, dear. Do let us know how your husband does."
"I will." Scyldie headed towards the exit, and the older women followed her. When she got to the door, she turned to them and said, "You know, I'm surprised you were this hostile to the idea. I can't even imagine the things your last companion went through when proving herself."
Verdinia and Aursula looked at each other with the strangest of expressions, then looked back at her. Aursula said, "That's right. You can't," and waved her hand in front of a small scanner tab. The door opened.
As Scyldie stepped out, something about their expressions nagged at her, as did Verdinia's earlier comments about perspectives on horrible events. She looked over her shoulder to the women and said, "By the way, how did she die, again?"
Aursula smiled, or at least showed her teeth, and said, "That's a very good question. Let's hope you never have to find out. " And the doors closed.
Scyldie stood outside, a new wind whipping at her clothes, and felt the darkened bloom of realization unfurl in her mind.
She would have to push hard at this, all the way through, and ensure that she could work with these people until she'd get to a position where she could dominate them. Otherwise she would never be safe. And it would all depend on her hunches and insight, more than ever before. Intuition or death.
Another gust of wind blew by, giving her a chill. She pulled her coat tighter and looked up at the sky, and what she saw made her burst out in laughter.
It had begun to snow.
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We have an offer for you. Wealth, comfort, anonymity and safety. No more running, no more worries of whether this organization to which you belong will destroy you. A new life.
Vania leaned back in her chair and rubbed her eyes. She'd been feeling cranky and feverish all day, and this really wasn't helping.
The message had come from "Jocasta Meliaan", whom the message identifiers verified as being a low-ranking member of Kaalakiota. It was possible to do a search through KK's database - they kept their employment records open to the general public - but Vania already knew she would find no one there by that name. Jocasta didn't exist. She was a facade for the Caldari State forces.
We know you're close to the leader. This is a terrorist organization you're involved with, and while they're ostensibly improving worker conditions, they are in fact working against the Caldari State. All you will ever accomplish with this group is more bloodshed and more violence. The recent freighter loss alone killed tens of thousands.
All we ask is that you help an agent of ours get close to your leader. We will get the person into your organization andyou will take over from there. No one but you will ever know who this agent is; no one will ever link you to the agent's presence.
This is the best way to defuse the situation without undue harm, and the only way that you and your companions will make it through alive.
Vania shook her head and deleted the message. She couldn't for the life of her imagine what would make these people think she could be swayed their way. Yes, she'd attached herself to Melarius, and yes, if she looked deep inside, she'd probably find the motivation to be self-preservation rather than morality or love. The factory floors had held little future, certainly. But neither did turncoating.
She got up, put on some warmer clothes and headed out into the hallways. They were traveling on a small industrial ship, modified to accommodate various pieces of stealth and communications equipment, and outfitted with excellent medical facilities in case of combat casualties. There was enough space for just over a thousand people, though their rations would keep at most a few hundred going.
Vania headed for the ops room. The metal walkways echoed under her footsteps, and the iron handrails were cold to the touch. There was always a chill in the air, and too much dust and metal filings in the corners. The medical facilities were well stocked, but with these kinds of living arrangements, and in such an enclosed space, colds and illness remained an endless source of frustration.
Most of the people she passed on her way there were other ex-factory workers, though there were some that had a distinct air of bureaucracy around them. She found herself wondering which ones were potential traitors, but closed off that line of thought. Paranoia wouldn't do her any good.
In the ops room, Melarius was crouched over tactical maps, discussing engagement tactics with Genharis Yuvoka. The latter was Melarius's right-hand man and a former Kaalakiota employee who had forsaken his masters for loyalty to a higher ideal.
Both men stopped talking when Vania entered. She walked directly to Melarius - one of few who could do such a thing, since he was flanked by a dozen armed guards at all times - planted a kiss on his cheek and asked how things were going.
"Not too good," Melarius said. There were dark patches under his eyes, and his voice had the choked throatiness of someone who'd inhaled too much cold, infected air. Vania knew how he felt.
"I heard we were getting more and more support," she said. "Especially after that freighter was blown up."
"We are," he said. "I'd be surprised if we don't pull in at least a few thousand heads. Amazing how death affects the minds of the living."
"So what's next?" Vania asked.
"That's our business," Genharis said. She glared at him, and he returned the stare.
"Rallying support," Melarius said. "That's all we're doing now. We've got most of our equipment in place, and what we need is manpower, committed manpower. That includes both of you, by the way. The last thing I need are ego fights in ops."
"She shouldn't even be here at all," Genharis muttered.
"Then why don't you make me go, big boy?" Vania said. "I've seen used tampons with more backbone than you."
"Right, thanks, enough," Melarius said. "Genharis, cool it. We're not going over this again. She's here, and she stays."
Vania gave Genharis the finger, but Melarius turned to her. "And you. Can you keep it under wraps for now, please? I'm letting you stay here because I gave up on arguing against it, but if you can't let us work you have no place in this room. It's hard enough planning a revolution without having a loose cannon firing off at everyone around me."
"Sir," Vania said and gave him a mock salute, then leaned in and gave him a kiss, appearing completely unperturbed. "Anyway, I'll head off, let you big boys deal with the big issues. But if you get blown up too, don't come crying to me."
She left the ops room and started slowly walking back towards her quarters, but a moment later she heard rapid footsteps approaching. She turned and saw Genharis walking up to her.
"You witch. You harpy," he said, sputtering in anger. "Do you have any idea what we're dealing with? Do you think you can just waltz in there, spread your poison and walk right back out?"
She began to reply, but he grabbed the neckline of her shirt and held taut, shaking her with his fury. "Melarius hasn't slept in gods know how long, and he's consumed with anger and sorrow over the freighter incident. The last thing he needs is comments from someone who has no responsibility, no rights to be here and no one to answer to."
Vania smiled, and stuck her hands in her pockets. "And this is going to help him how?"
Genharis subsided a little at that. "All right," he said, letting go of her shirt. "Okay. I know, it's-"
He got no further, as Vania pulled a small knife out of her pocket, grabbed hold of Genharis and with surprising force slammed him against the nearest metal wall. Before he could break her grip she had moved right up against him, the point of her knife resting against his stomach, the forearm of her other hand resting on his throat. The people who walked past, survivors of years at the Caldari factories and industrial plants, pointedly ignored them.
"It's really quite simple, Genharis," she hissed at him. "You know nothing, absolutely nothing about what I've gone through to get here. You have no idea what it took for me even to get a job at the factory, or what I was forced to do before then. So don't you dare think you can get high and mighty with me. This is where I am, and this is where I'm staying, and if you get in my way I will kill you."
She removed her arm from his throat, but held the knife in place.
"You can only think of yourself, can't you?" Genharis said quietly.
"Nobody else will," she said, backing off and putting the knife back in her pocket. For a moment she was hit with a strong sense of nausea and vertigo, but she fought it off, and Genharis didn't seem to have noticed. She glared at him and stalked off.
***
It wasn't too long after that Vania went in for her regularly scheduled body scan. When they'd gotten this ship, and when the Brotherhood had started growing in numbers, ops had decided that everyone should go in for regular checks. People's health was bad enough as it was without the risk of adding some new and disgusting infectious disease to the mix. Vania herself had been feeling increasingly worse; the onsets of vertigo and nausea had grown more common, and to top it off she felt a constant ache in her bones. She was starting to feel like an old lady, and she hated every minute of it.
So when the scan results came in, she was looking forward to figuring out what was wrong and how it could be fixed. That feeling lasted right up until the moment where she read the first line on the results monitor, the line that gave her a diagnosis, the line that changed everything.
Then she read further on, and everything changed again.
***
"I'm pregnant."
She had been avoiding Melarius ever since the results came in. He'd been so caught up in planning the rebellion that he hadn't even noticed. At one level Vania was frustrated at that, at his constant prioritization of the masses over her, but she knew that he couldn't be faulted for it. And besides, it had given her some much-needed time to think about the future.
They were in his quarters now, sitting at a table in the kitchen section. He had a cup of coffee; she had a glass of tri-filtered water. The lights were too bright.
He took a sip of his coffee. "I'm happy, you understand," he said. "I'm very happy. I have no energy left, no energy at all, but if I did, I'd be jumping around and yelling like a fool."
She smiled at that, and put his hand on his. "There's more," she said.
"Twins?" he asked.
She gave a quick, explosive laugh, almost a bark. "No, no. Not twins. But more than a handful."
"I don't understand."
"The baby has defects."
His free hand froze in place, holding the cup halfway to his face. "Defects."
"Congenital defects both mental and physical. It's called Predicatus Ingvarius. The baby'll be fine for the first few months, but then its health will start to deteriorate rapidly. It'll eventually stabilize at a non-lethal level, but not before it suffers irreversible damage."
"How bad?" Melarius asked.
"Nobody knows. The first year or two will be filled with him contracting every illness known to man, but he should pull through. Mental deficiency's a given, so's crippling bouts of pain, and only a small percentage avoids a wheelchair. Chances are he'll be able to participate in life to some degree - he won't be comatose - but how much he'll be able to understand and communicate, well, it depends purely on luck."
"It's a he?"
She sighed. "Yes. It's a he."
Melarius ran his fingers through his hair. "Gods in heavens."
"I don't know how we're going to handle it, at least not while we don't have a proper base. The med facilities on this ship can handle regular illnesses, but they're not even close to dealing with this sort of thing. The databanks can diagnose it, but no more. I-"
"How far along are you?" he said.
"Beg pardon?"
"In the pregnancy."
She blinked. "Uh, a few weeks."
"So there's still time," he said, half to himself.
Vania felt herself grow very cold. "Time for what, exactly?"
He visibly steeled himself, and held on firmly to her hand. "To abort the child."
"We are not aborting my baby."
"Vania-"
"We are not aborting my baby."
"Look, if you think about this-"
"We are not aborting my baby."
"Vania, in each life there must be great sacrifices. We as a people-"
"Oh, for crying out loud!" she yelled. "Don't use that voice, not ever again. This is me you're talking to, not an assembly of workers on a factory floor."
Melarius kept going, "Do you have any idea what kind of life he's going to lead here? Because I don't. I don't know where I'm going to be in a week, if I even live that long. You've seen what this kind of life does to us, normal people in good health. Can you even imagine bringing a sick child into it? What kind of people are we if we consciously allow someone to suffer through all the things we have to go through?"
"By the time I have the baby, things will be different," Vania said.
"They certainly will. At best I'll be hip-deep in organizing labor unions, governmental committees and militias, running around while my child languishes in its lonely crib. More likely I'll be on the run, me and you and everyone else here, constantly fighting the State. There'll be no money, no proper or consistent health care, and no time even to raise our child, let alone take care of its myriad needs. What'll we do if we have to go underground for weeks at a time? Could you sit there and watch a sick infant cry and scream night after night after night, knowing that its pain won't ever stop and that you can do nothing to help it?"
"Don't you dare make me into the villain here," she said. "You don't want this because of the child's well-being; you want to abort it, for gods' sakes. All you see is a political liability and a threat to your precious rebellion. This thing you started has already caused the deaths of countless people, including the hundreds of thousands burned up, flash-frozen or suffocated when that freighter blew up."
"Don't you bring the freighter into this," he said.
"Why not? Does it hurt? Does it hurt, Melarius?"
"You don't understand-"
"How can you care about the lives of people you've never even met, and not care about the one single life you are responsible for? How does that work? Do you need to be a politician to make sense out of that one? Which mask are you wearing now, Mister Politician?"
"You don't understand. You don't understand." Melarius was looking elsewhere now, up at the ceiling or down at the floor, anything but meet Vania's gaze.
"What don't I understand? That you want to lose one more life on your road to fame?"
"Why does this even matter to you?!" he shot back. "Yes, this is our child! Yes, if I could change things so that it wouldn't have a twisted, horrible life, I would. But I can't! I can't just sit here with you and pretend that everything's going to be okay, because I know it won't and you know it too. It's an ugly and terrible thing, but it's the truth. Why can't you accept that?"
"Because I'm the child's mother, that's why!" she said.
He threw up his hands. "And that trumps everything! That's the long and the short of it right there, isn't it? I can say anything I like, explain the reality of our situation a thousand times, and it still won't matter, will it? You say I'm ruled by logic, fine, let's say I am. You're ruled by emotions. Will your love cure our child? No, it won't. Will your love keep it healthy and happy and pain-free? No, it won't. The only thing your love will do is create a human being whose only role in this short and terrible life will be to suffer."
She didn't respond, but sat quite still, occasionally drying a tear from her eyes. Eventually she said, in a low and quavering voice, "This is the first time I have anything to live for beside myself. I am not giving that up."
"Vania-"
"I know I'm selfish. I know. That's how I am; that's how I function. I never pretended to be anything else. I left everything behind when I followed you, because I thought I'd find something greater to live for than myself, but in the end I did it for the same reason I do everything else: For me, and me only. This baby will change that."
"This baby will make you a martyr. All it does is let you transfer that selfish focus from yourself to our son, and that's not fair on anyone. If you want to work out your issues, you have to do it starting with yourself, not on someone else by proxy, and least of all on a chronically ill child."
Melarius moved his chair closer to Vania's, and continued, "We'll try again later. When it's all settled down, however many months or years that takes, we'll try again. I'm not opposed to starting a family; it's a big step but it's one that I'd like to take. But it needs to be on terms we're both happy with."
"That's all it's about, isn't it?" Vania said. "Terms."
"I guess so."
She dried her eyes and stood. "I think I had better leave now."
"Okay. We'll talk again later."
She turned and, without saying another word, left the quarters.
***
She stayed away from him for a few days after that, and when they did pass by one another, they didn't say a word. At last she sent him a message asking him if he would change his mind. He replied:
Absolutely not. I'm sorry.
When she received that reply, she stared at it for a good long time before deleting it. Then she started writing a new letter, addressed to a Jocasta Meliaan, with the subject line "Your offer." The letter began:
I'm going to need the finest medical care.
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For Lauder, the first thought of the day was, "Yes." Nothing more, and no matter how he really felt; just this simple affirmation. He wasn't much of an optimist, and the word was autogenic if anything. It was followed by a short meditation, a clearing of the mind, as if he were preparing a playing field for the day's activities.
Lauder was an inventor, specializing in design patterns for ship parts, and was employed in the research section of his corporation. He was in his late twenties, a brilliant designer who'd spearheaded the recent invention drive and been primarily responsible for a good part of the datacores coming out of his company.
He also suffered from depression. And he clung to prayers like lifeblood, but they weren't religious ones, leastwise not in the traditional sense. He'd have loved being religious, to give his mind over to an outside force and trust in that force to put things right, but he simply couldn't. It wasn't in the nature of engineers to trust in faith and blind luck. If something wasn't working, you went in there and fixed it yourself.
Instead, he used autosuggestion. He told himself, in the repetitive, monotonous chanting of a pious monk, that the day would go fine; that all was well, all was well, and all manner of things would be well. It was a litany of positivities, and he knew it really wasn't that far removed from actual prayer, but despite his slight uneasiness at doing it in this manner, he persisted. It was a stepping stone, a rung on the ladder, and nothing more.
Once he'd get to work, he knew, everything would improve. His job was highly cerebral: He worked with abstract models and pattern relationships, and spent most of his time discovering connections between them. He had a highly developed visual system for these patterns, one that virtually permitted him to pick out seemingly unrelated units and string them together, like beads on a string, to discover that they were in fact related in some cryptic but potentially useful manner. He loved doing this, and when it was going well he was almost acting out of his own body, watching himself pick out the patterns, then watching the way they interacted and clicked with one another to make some new thing of beauty. When it was not going well, every action of the day could turn into a choice. "Should I piece together this collection of patterns," he'd think, "or go blow my head off in the hybrid testing room?"
So his morning environment, that one place he had to face before he could go to work, and the major factor in his mood for the rest of the day, he kept as positive as possible. A plasma screen in the kitchen showed sunrise over farmland, and the borders of the screen even displayed a painted wooden window frame, giving rise to the illusion that the watcher was sitting inside his own little farmhouse. Soft music played, a mix of birdsong and ambient tones. There was a myriad of electronic and mechanical equipment in Lauder's kitchen, remnants from countless late-night experiments, and he often had to dig through a pile of strange-looking metal objects to get to his early-morning coffee and cigarettes. These days he was working on improvements to the new armor rigs, the antipumps in particular, and as a result had, in his kitchen, several test canisters of the liquid used as a pressurant in the pump hydraulics. It was a tarry, scentless concoction, and he'd been very careful not to accidentally pour any into his drinking cups. The liquid didn't taste too bad and even had some mildly intoxicating properties, and thus, by regulation, was laced with an antabus reageant. A good sip of it would make you wish you'd brought more reading material.
That plasma screen on the wall was put to good use, too. Once Lauder had set the coffeepot gently bubbling away - it could be done instantly, but this was a ritual - he stood in front of the screen, in a spot kept clear of any mechanical contrivances, and said out loud, "Unfocus."
Before him, the image on the screen began to fade in and out of focus, one minute crisp and clear, the other slightly fuzzy around the edges like a painting. Not only that, but the positioning of certain elements was adjusted slightly, so that the cattle on the left seemed to drift outward to the edge of the screen, the fields on the right shifted and undulated, and the farmhouse in the middle receded ever so slightly towards its own vanishing point.
Lauder unfocused his eyes, relaxing them and trying to see into and past the screen. He tensed up a number of muscles, in his hands, in his abdomen and at the back of his neck, and felt his customized optic implant activate. It took him a little while to drift off, until he at last found himself outside his quarters, outside everything, and inside the picture itself.
***
He stood there, surveying the land and taking his time. Eventually, he knew, he would have to turn and start his preparations, but for these brief moments of unreality he was content to watch the landscape. He stood on a small grassy plain in front of the farmhouse, regarding it, the trees that grew beside it, and the sun beyond. The sun was bright, but not so much that he couldn't look at it. A gentle wind fanned the leaves on the trees. To his left he heard the cattle trudge through the grass, its tails swishing at flies. Somewhere in the distance, a brook babbled. It was perfect, really.
He sighed, not so much from exasperation but from simple enjoyment drawn to a close, and turned.
It was like going from day to night. The vista before him had no single light source, but there were luminous paths leading everywhere, and the buildings - no, not buildings, the constructs - that dotted the landscape also seemed aglow with a soft, pulsating fire. The area was a patchwork that shifted as Lauder's gaze roved over it: Here, a patch of desert, on which lay a series of interconnected brick shacks, each one of their tan surfaces decorated with murals of maroon clay. There, misty swampland, beset with wooden cabins that seemed to float on the grungy water and that, every now and then, would arise on massive but spindly legs and reposition themselves. In the distance, forested hills, over which towered massive stone castles, their spires aimed to pierce the sky. Everything was low-tech, and everything shifted, like reflections on water droplets. Lauder concentrated and the swampland disappeared, replaced with a series of a promontories, each holding a tall tower that looked half like a lighthouse and half like a minaret. From the corner of his eye he saw a few paths that seemed to go nowhere, and frowned, but paid them no more heed for the time being.
This was his unconscious mind. This was the place where his eyes didn't go.
He walked down a path to one of the lighthouses. In reality the trip should have taken him hours, but distances were deceptive here, and he was by the front door in a split second. Before opening it, he looked up; the tower was so tall that he couldn't even see its top section.
He looked back down at the door. It was made of wood and decorated with multitudinous carvings, ones that, the closer you looked, the more detail you saw. Lauder took a moment to look them over, taking in only the most general of details. Then he opened the door, and walked into the lighthouse.
On the inside it was more like a gallery. The walls were covered with objet d'arts: Paintings, etchings, carvings, collages, any style one could think of. The ground was littered with sculptures, and even the floor itself was a mosaic of abstract patterns. What was especially odd about the mass of art was that it followed no period, no theme and really no style at all. A realist painting of a space station hung beside a child's drawing of a family sitting in their car, and beside it, fluttering gently on some barely detectable breeze, was a jagged cutout from a picture book on general mechanics.
Despite the apparently haphazard selection and ordering of items, they each had a definite purpose. Taken one by one they were useless, but it was their sequencing and their precise placement that did the trick. Taken together, the objects in each house formed pattern collections, mnemonics of the innumerable design patterns that Lauder had to work with. He didn't even think of the buildings as houses, but gave them their proper term instead: Memory palaces. If all went well, Lauder would travel through several palaces before his breakfast was done, and by the time he was finished, he would be well prepared for the day's design work, able with ease to call up from memory a myriad of patterns with a rapidity that astounded his coworkers.
The technique was old and had long since fallen out of popular favour, but Lauder had found that by privately modifying limited optic and memory augmentations he could put it to good use. It could be argued that a proper memory implant would do just as well, but they were so expensive that Lauder hadn't been able to afford one at the outset. Once he'd finally made enough money to buy one, he found that he didn't much want it. The mnemonic linking techniques stood him in good stead. And besides, there were other reasons why he wanted to come here.
He travelled through the gigantic tower at high speed, slowing only to momentarily inspect a few of the newer sequences. Once done, he flickered back to the door and left the tower, intending to travel to the next one in line.
Except that the paths didn't lead there anymore. There was nothing left of the original pathways except faint, thin lines. The new paths, glowing and pulsating, stretched across the land and into the distance, towards dark clouds and darker territory. Lauder looked around and saw that the paths to every one of the other palaces had reconfigured themselves accordingly. They all led straight into the shadowlands.
Lauder sighed and rubbed his eyes. The palaces were his memory, but the paths were, quite literally, his thoughts. And if he didn't do something about this, he knew he was going to have a very rough time.
There sounded a faint but insistent beeping noise, and Lauder vanished.
***
He came to in the kitchen. The beeps were issuing from his oven, which had heated up to the proper temperature. Lauder opened his fridge, took out a couple of prepared sandwiches, unwrapped them and put them on a metal tray, then slid the tray into the oven. This same process could be achived in ten seconds by a microwave, but Lauder didn't care. He needed the slow mornings, not only to familiarize himself with the pattern data, but to deal with crises like the one now looming on the horizon. He checked on the coffee, which he had set to an extremely slow drip, and found that the pot was half ready. He'd have enough time for what he needed to do, without having to break routine.
He sighed again, and steeled himself. He hated having to do this. But already he could feel the darkness creeping into his conscious thoughts, like drops of ink into water. The very dread at having to go back into the other world and face the shadowlands told him that he'd better do it while he still could.
He looked at the plasma screen again. The scenery was the same, and gave him some small comfort. He unfocused, activated the implants, and after a moment's disorientation he was inside.
***
The sky was overcast now, full of menacing clouds. There was noticeably less light among the palaces, and the pulsing pathways, all of them leading to the same shapeless void, did not ease his mind.
The pathways were an abstraction, he knew, but they were close to the real thing. He was looking at the actual neural pathways in his brain, as near as he could ever get to true self-analysis. Were he to let enough time pass, he would find himself propelled down the paths and into the murky depths of depression, pulled by the unseen hand of his deeper self. And once he had been sucked in, there was no easy way back, except to survive the best he could until the paths allowed him safe return. It was absolute hell.
He'd managed to avoid it for weeks now, with proper diet, exercise, enough sleep, the right amount of challenging work, and a host of little self-congratulatory acts he performed whenever he could: Smiling at his success in some tiny little task, buying good food for himself, silently reciting mantras of positivity and cheer whenever he felt a downturn. And it had done him good. He felt strong, and very annoyed that his mind was trying to take him down that ugly route.
If he got stuck in the shadowlands, the palaces back here would start to fade, until, if it took long enough, he would have to rebuild most of them from the ground up. The thought of all that work reduced to rubble pushed him beyond annoyance and frustration, and made him feel very angry indeed.
And somewhere in the midst of that anger, the realization came to him that perhaps this time he could successfully fight back.
There had been times, so many times, where he tried and failed. But not always. And he'd done well for so long, built up so much strength...
He decided to stop analyzing it. The more he thought about it, the more he'd fear the failure, and worry about the extra expenditure of energy when he might need it all for the onset of depression. If this went wrong, he'd be utterly powerless.
He stood very still, took one last look at the palaces and at the ever-growing shadowlands that threatened to engulf them, then closed his eyes. Back in the real world, his body tensed up and activated a little-used function of his brain implants, one used only in dire need. It was a wetware reset.
The world grew black. He could feel the pulsating warmth of the path he stood on, and hear the crackling sounds as the shadowlands, with glacial speed and inexorability, tore up all that he had created. He quieted his mind, emptied it as best he could, and waited.
For how long he stood there, he didn't know, but at least he heard it. The small but unmistakable trickle of water. The trickle turned to a gurgle, which escalated to a steady drip, a pour, a gushing that got louder and louder, until at last it seemed as if he were standing in the middle of a massive river, its overflowing torrents washing away everything in their path. He felt nothing on him, no pressure, but yet the sound got even louder, as if he were standing on the breaking point of a tsunami that held, held, held ... and now crashed down, like a sweeping hand of God, clearing the lands at last.
The sound faded away. He stood stock still, not daring to move. Any action on his part could reawaken neural paths that had to be left alone, and the reset could only be done once in a row without risking his very mind in the process.
It was a faint but unmistakable scent that helped him rejoin the world: He smelled the freshness of the land after rain, the olfactory confirmation that everything had been washed clean. There would be no more reassurances, he knew. He took a deep breath, and opened his eyes.
The swamp had returned in place of the desert, and all the landscape had a decidedly drenched look. In the distance, the flags from the castle spires hung limp and heavy. The sealine at the promontories had definitely risen.
He took in these details in brief desperation, trying to prove to himself that the shadowlands had been washed away without having to look in their actual direction. But it didn't last; he had to look.
They were gone. They had been eliminated. The skies were clear all around; the void had, for lack of a better word, vanished; and all the pathways that had once led to oblivion were washed clean, not disappeared but left inert, unused, dim.
The path he stood on was straight and narrow, leading only to a focal point on a nearby hill, where Lauder saw that it crisscrossed with a number of other paths that all led safely to a palace. Aside from the reappearance of swampland, the palace grounds and buildings seemed safe and undamaged.
Lauder felt immense relief. The only worry that remained was what he'd done in the real world. The reset played havoc with his head, and would at times activate neural pathways that probably should have been left untouched. It also broke his safeguards, so he wouldn't return to consciousness even if he'd been in an accident. Most of the time his behaviour bore passable similarity to his daily routine, so he fervently hoped he hadn't done anything stupid like take off his clothes and walk naked to work.
The world faded, replaced by reality. Lauder found himself lying on the floor in a fetal position. He got up, brushed off his clothes and looked around. Everything seemed in order. Better than that, even. The sandwiches had been taken from the oven - using the oven mitts, thankfully, so his fingers were unblistered - and put on the kitchen table alongside a coffeecup and some juice in a carton.
Lauder was flooded with relief. All had gone well. It was amazing. And nobody was pointing, taking pictures, covering their children's eyes, or anything.
He sat at the table, mind awash with gratitude toward nothing in particular. Impulsively he reached for the sandwich and nibbled on it. It'd be a good day, he thought. And the sandwich was just right. He was just about to head out for work when he grabbed the coffeecup and took a big swallow, and in that instant realized two things: one, that the coffeepot was still full on the stove, and two, that an open canister of the antabus-laced armor rig hydraulic fluid stood on the kitchen table.
He nearly passed it by, but it was a museum and he'd always made time for those. The entrance was completely open, with no door, coathangers, service desk or any concession to living human beings that might enter. Ruebin looked around to see if there might be any kind of billing or ticket sale, but there wasn't even a kredit reader in sight.
There was, however, a plaque on the wall. It was made of a whitish, translucent material that looked like plastic but gave off a ringing sound like glass when Ruebin knocked on it. On its surface, presumably with a laser, had been etched the logos of several prominent Caldari corporations, including most of the ones from the three major blocks. The names stood out in stark black on the plaque's creamy surface, as did the smaller lettering below that denoted the museum had free admission courtesy of this coalition of Caldari corporations. Through the entrance corridor he could see machinery in various states of disassembly.
Ruebin felt at once intrigued and disappointed. The sign outside had said "Electric Museum", which wasn't very promising but did at least offer the hopeful possibility that this might be some kind of modernist art exhibit. That hope was now extinguished, and since this was a Caldari museum there would be no signs of the Gallentean vagaries, the dignified and terrible Amarr designs, or the Minmatar rust-or-die approach. On the other hand, since this was purely a Caldari place, Ruebin figured he might get a little kick out the unavoidable jingoism and touches of propaganda that would be scattered about in the exhibits. Besides, on his trips he always went to any museum he could find, not so much out of any kind of appreciation for the history or theory of art, but purely out of aesthetic enjoyment. He loved seeing what other people had created, and revelling in the myriad layers of meaning and coherence that he as a layman could just barely make out. The glimpse and promise of surface wonders were far more appealing to him than a headlong plunge could ever be.
He went in. The main entrance opened into a large, square room beset with low pillars. On top of each pillar stood a piece of machinery. Some of them were encased in glass cages, and some were held in place by long wires that hung from the ceiling. Ruebin didn't recognize any of them, so he wandered over to the nearest pillar. On one side it had a small touchpad with the Ishukone logo and several buttons.
He pressed a button, and the pillar's top surface lit up, illuminating the complex interweave of metal and plastic it supported within a glass cage. An unseen projector inside the cage cast purple letters on the glass, running through the item's history and intended purpose. Another projector cast off a neon-green light that, through reflections in tiny, carefully placed mirrors at various points in the glass, illuminated various sections of the module according to whatever text was being displayed. Ruebin pressed an arrow on the touchpad; the purple text scrolled to the next page, and the green lights shifted and illuminated another section of the metal part. In larger museums, Ruebin knew, they had proper 3D imagery and would often show a translucent, rotating image of the item, floating above the actual unit. This place apparently didn't have the budget.
For a lark, Ruebin pressed a tiny, ridged button on the touchpad's side. Immediately the display ended, and tiny buttons began appearing on the touchpad, from its surface like little buds trying to bloom in frozen earth. A small card reader shifted out on the touchpad's side, and voice asked him to press his ID card up against it, adding that once he'd done so and proven his blindness, the glass walls would withdraw so that he could put his hands on the module while listening to its description. Ruebin backed away silently and proceeded to the next room.
Once there, he heard a voice that at first sounded like it were coming from another of those blind-assisted tours, but after a while he found it contained far too much emotion to possibly have been recorded for a museum exhibit. It came from a room nearby, so Ruebin stalked through. He was met with a bobble-headed vision like a cotton picker at harvest, and the gripping smell of knitted sweaters and comfortable perfume. A gaggle of senior citizens were clustered around a short old man, all watching him with rapt attention. There were a few others closer to Ruebin's age, including a pair of young men who looked thoroughly bewildered to even be there, but the whiteness of hair was overwhelming nonetheless. The man stood beside a pedestal and was extemporizing on its design with the heat of an Amarrian preacher.
"This, now, this thing here was created by Nugoeihuvi corporation, Noh for short, and even though it's fifty years old it absolutely epitomizes their design philosophies. See these curves here on the outer casing, how they're moulded to the wings of the module so that it radiates as much heat as possible without risking structural instability. And notice how each pipe leading into the main combustion chamber is elegantly bent around the titanium spindles, so as to give them increased stability without interference with their operation. It's beautiful engineering."
The man's voice was impassioned, his speech rapt and clear. He kept it under practiced control, modulating his words for effect, but you could tell that he wanted to break out, to speed up and let it flicker in the air like a whip.
Ruebin made his way close to the group. He was a little taller than the old women and could make out the curator's face and upper body. The man, whose nametag identified him as Entrye Chrare, had his eyes tightly shut and was leaning down in rapture; so far down, in fact, that he was actually pointing upwards at the pedestalled module beside him. His skin was old and wrinkled, and his clothes bore witness to countless trips through the dusty corridors of oily mechanical history.
It occurred to Ruebin that the museum's title was a misnomer. There was nothing electric here except for the curator's delivery.
"All right, we've wrapped up this room. Is everyone ready for the," Entrye paused dramatically, "special exhibition?"
The group tittered with excitement. Ruebin smiled, and stepped a little closer. Nobody seemed to have noticed him so far.
"Excellent. We'll head over, then. I'll take us through a few side routes along the way, maybe point out one or two things." Entrye set off, the old ladies and Ruebin following on his heels. Ruebin tried to stay close to the men his own age, but nobody seemed much to mind his presence there anyway.
They passed through four rooms, each one containing a dozen pedestals displaying more mechanical equipment. All rooms were marked with Caldari corporate logos, usually followed by sponsorship information and a short thank-you note from the museum. Entrye threw off a comment here and there.
In the Hyasyoda room: "See that prototype warp core stabilizer? It may look like a radioactive nutcracker, but that particular brand was an amazing innovation back in its day."
Passing through the Lai Dai corridor: "That is one of the first cruise missile launchers the Caldari ever produced. Lai Dai nearly went bankrupt perfecting the design, only to see it appropriated by everyone else and mass-produced a year later."
Stopping in the small Wiyrkomi foyer: "For ages the Seituoda people persisted in stamping, etching or otherwise marking a rather strange, homemade family logo on the inside of each module. Ostensibly it was supposed to look like a Caldari vessel firing off an oversized torpedo, but they discontinued its use when someone pointed out that when viewed from a certain angle, the logo looked pornographic."
And then they arrived at the special exhibit.
A sign on the door declared paid entrance, and the entire group came to a halt, the bobble-headed old women all digging around in their pockets and purses for their ticket receipts. Ruebin wondered whether to split, but before he could come to a decision the curator's tremulous voice thundered over them, "Don't stop! Forward go, full blast. Follow me, everyone."
The group, shocked into obeisance, immediately stormed after the guide and into the room. Ruebin followed on their heels, giving an apologetic smile to a disinterested guard.
Inside the room were two long rows of pedestals, running perfectly parallel, each holding a single module. The pedestals were the same type as Ruebin had seen all over the museum, but the designs of the display items were markedly different. Where elsewhere there had been sharp, crisp lines and unembellished designs, here there were soft curves, smoother surfaces and clearly some rather complex, almost convoluted constructions. There were big "Don't touch" signs posted on the walls, but as the items weren't even covered in glass cages Ruebin couldn't stop himself from running his fingers over one, trailing its arches and coils. When he looked up, he saw that the curator was staring at him, and quickly put his hand back into his pocket.
As the curator returned to guiding the group through the designs, Ruebin's thoughts drifted away. He couldn't help but notice how every module in this room, at least so far as he had seen, was so much nicer and more intricately made than anything he'd seen outside. He looked around to see if there were any explanations for this, plaques with details and such, but the only things he saw were the Kaalakiota and Sukuuvestaa logos on either side of the room. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that one row was solely Kaalakiota items and the other Sukuuvestaa modules.
Ruebin felt a sense of cognitive dissonance. He'd been to so many museums in so many places that although he'd had no formal education in art history he still considered himself perfectly able to discern styles of art, even among similarly designed pieces. And to him, these two rows seemed as if they could've been transported in from another world. They looked positively Gallentean.
"Who made these?" he said, half to himself.
"Two CEOs," the curator responded. "Well, one CEO and one CFO. They're from the days when KK and SuVee were still developing their business practices, getting a feel for how they could best ingratiate themselves with their customers. This was one of their attempts; only one product line out of many, but quite distinguishable. Turns out they couldn't do it by kindness and concern, so they ended up changing their tactics somewhat."
Ruebin hesitated. He hadn't realized that he'd been spotted by the rest of the group, who had apparently been watching him when he inspected the modules. All eyes were on him now.
"Err ..."
"Shall we move on, young master?" said the curator, not unkindly.
"Yes, please. Thank you. Sorry," Ruebin said, and followed the group. They walked slowly through the room, the curator pointing at each item in both rows and expounding on it. Most of them he compared to known works of art, paintings and sculptures and suchlike, and mentioned that these module designs had clear signs of emulating them. It surprised Ruebin, who had never seen the Caldari go much for the softer, more expressive side of art. Minimalism, symbology and, these days, militarism were much more their thing.
And then, as if crossing over to a different era, the modules changed. The softness became hard and unyielding; the smooth curves turned to chiseled angles; the kind, matte surfaces turned specular and confrontative. It was subtle, and wouldn't have been noticed by the casual observer, but to Ruebin, veteran of endless museum trips, it was unmistakable. He stopped in his tracks, speechless.
The rest of the group marched on, the curator's recitation continuing uninterrupted. They went on for a pillar or two before the curator apparently noticed the absence of the group's youngest member. He cast around for Ruebin, noticed him and half-shouted, "Did I miss something in my explanations, young man?"
"I'm not sure," Ruebin said. "I may have missed it. Could you please tell me what happened here?" He waved a hand at the first modules of the new, cold design.
"Oh, nothing much," the curator replied.
"Nothing much? It's like another world!" Ruebin said in astonishment.
"It's the past, my boy. It often feels that way. If I may ask, what exactly are you talking about?"
Ruebin explained. The curator shrugged and said, "Be that as it may, I'm not sure I see any less value in the later modules. If it's any help, the people responsible were deposed, and there was a sea change in values."
"What do you mean?"
The curator walked over to him and, in all defiance of museum rules, placed a paternal hand on the module in front of them. He put his other hand on Ruebin's shoulder. "I mean that the people who designed the old modules, the ones you find so appealing, were the main participants in quite a serious scandal. It involved company funds, or the misuse of those funds, rather. They chose to step down rather than be put on trial."
Ruebin was stunned. The thought that the originators of these beautiful things had been corrupt was nearly incomprehensible to him. But something nagged at the back of his mind. "Hang on. They were a CEO and CFO. How'd they get into designing modules?"
"It's not uncommon for the heads of a company to get involved in the design," the curator replied. "After all, the modules are often the company's signature pieces, representing it on the quite lucrative capsuleer market. Some CEOs take a personal interest in the process. And besides," he added, "the module's appearance isn't connected to its function. I daresay you could make a, well, a shield booster that looked like a hat, if you so pleased."
"I didn't mean to criticize it so heavily," Ruebin said, feeling a dozen pairs of nearsighted eyes trying to focus on him. "I'm not a philistine."
"My dear boy, I never said you were!" the curator replied with a smile. "You've got quite the inquisitive mind. So much so, in fact, that I'd be happy to discuss this with you after the tour is over."
Ruebin opened his mouth to politely refuse the offer, but something in the curator's eyes stayed his words. Instead, he nodded, and said, "One question. Who was it that gave away those two?"
"Good question," the curator said, and whatever glint in his eyes turned a fraction more apparent. "As I said, one of them was a CFO of SuVee, who was second in command. The informer was his superior, SuVee's CEO, a man named Kishbin."
"He was ratted out by his boss?"
"Indeed he was."
"The man must've hated him. Was it because he was working with KK's CEO on this?"
"After a fashion," the curator said. "The museum will be closing soon, and I really must finish guiding these pretty young things through the halls of culture."
Ignoring the delighted giggles from the old ladies, and the eye-rolling from the men, the curator continued, "If you're interested, see me here after we close. Tell the guards you're waiting for me."
*** The museum was even quieter now, with the lone sound coming from cleaner bugs floating over the dirtied floors. The guards had either seen the exchange between Ruebin and the curator, or simply did not care. They left him completely alone.
At first Ruebin constrained himself to pacing the exhibition room, but when the curator didn't return, he ventured back into the museum proper. The modules seemed different now, less relics of a bygone era and more subtle indicators of a real past with real people. It occurred to Ruebin how often he forgot this on his museum trips, how often he assigned to the things he saw a mental shelf in the present time, forgetting entirely that the people who created them had been real humans. Not ghosts, not ethereal entities that created art from void only to disappear into it themselves, but real people with souls and bodies as real as his was now. Ephemeral, perhaps, in the grand sceme of things, but not ethereal.
"What did you think happened?" someone said.
Ruebin spun around. The curator had walked up soundlessly, and now stood there, hands in pockets, a faint smile on his wrinkled face.
"The CEOs? I don't know. I know it wasn't corruption."
The curator raised an eyebrow. "Why's that?"
"First off, I find it hard to believe that anyone who created the things I saw could be an evil person. I know that's naive, it's horribly naive and simplistic. It's what a child would say. But it's a gut feeling."
"Gut feelings are sometimes right," the curator said. "Or at least point you in a better direction than common sense alone. Especially in art."
They walked towards the exhibit room.
"Second, the things are much too intricate. If the guys intended to use them as a ruse, to distract customers from business problems, they'd have been better off putting less effort into each design, and pumping out more types instead. Flashy, quick, eye-catching."
"What if it wasn't a ruse for the public, but the stockholders? A money sink, to divert attention from their scamming?" the curator asked.
"Well, you know the story better than I, of course. Even so, it wouldn't make sense. If you're skimming off the top, you want to make sure that fingers get pointed elsewhere once the company runs into problems. Otherwise, all you've accomplished is ensuring that you'll be the first one whose books get audited."
"Good point," the curator said, and nothing more.
Once they got to the entrance they stopped and stared at the pieces in silence. At last Ruebin said, "I think it was communication. I don't know how, but that's what it looks like. Not competition, seeing who could outdo whom, but a kind of mutual building, an escalation towards some aesthetic heights, an upward spiral of beauty, and ye gods, I'm sounding like such a pretentious art critic right now ..."
The curator laughed. "I've heard worse. At least you're speaking from the heart, and not trying to impress me."
Ruebin walked into the room. "So what was it?" he asked without turning to look at the curator. "What drove them to it, and what caused their fall? Come to that, what were their names?"
The curater walked up to him. "Their names were David and Yonate, and I believe you're the first person in a long while to ask that question. As for who the two men were, you won't find it in the history books. They were lovers."
"...what?"
"Mm, they were. David was CEO of KK, and Yonate was CFO of SuVee. They kept it secret for as long as they could, but something happened that made them change their minds, or at the very least get careless about it. Those modules were their testimonials to one another, and to their love."
"No wonder they fell from grace," Ruebin said. "It would've been completely unacceptable to ... well, to everyone."
"It was," the curator said.
"Amazing." Ruebin walked over to one of the modules, seeing it in a completely new light. "What caused the fall? Oh, wait, you said. SuVee's CEO, Kishbin."
"That was so."
"Must've been annoyed. His second in command, so desperately in love with the CEO of a rival company that he started moulding company policy, with an excuse about attracting customer attention."
"Not only that," the curator said. "The modules were actually a modest success, which doubtlessly aggrieved him even more. He certainly did his best to keep KK at bay. Story has it he even resisted a mutual publication deal, financing and such, by demanding that David come up with a hundred units of some quite rare minerals."
"Which ones?"
"Nobody said, but legend has it that David procured two hundred, which was apparently no mean feat."
"Wow."
"It ended up with Kishbin going after David rather harshly, to the point that David had to use shadow stocks to maintain control of his company, putting himself out of Kishbin's reach."
"Which didn't help once the allegations of corruption came out."
"Precisely."
"Amazing," Ruebin said. "So what we're seeing here is the destruction of two men, and the story of what happened after Kishbin finally had his way and got rid of them."
"Yes. Yes, I suppose you might say that."
Ruebin turned to him. "You don't sound entirely convinced."
The curator remained silent for so long that Ruebin thought he was going to ignore the question. Then the curator said, "No, I'm not. Not at all."
It was now Ruebin who kept silent, waiting for the curator to voice his thoughts.
The old man walked over to one of the modules, ran his hands over it and sighed. "I don't think Kishbin was trying to ruin them. I think he was trying to save them from their own self-destruction. The poor men couldn't be together, couldn't do anything, and eventually it got to them. They took it to a level they shouldn't have."
"A kind of flaunting, at the whole world."
"Precisely."
"Showing it without showing it."
"Exactly."
"Putting yourself in a position where you can advertise it, even if nobody realizes who you are or what needs you have."
"I would certainly say so, yes."
"Although it would be eternally frustrating if they didn't understand," said Ruebin, "so you would have to step up your efforts. Try to attract more attention. Send out signals. All the while trying to gain approval for what you're doing, even as you flaunt it as the taboo you know it to be."
The curator hesitated a little at this. "Yes, I think that's an apt description. You're certainly adept at getting into their heads."
Ruebin rubbed his eyes. "Not nearly as much as you, sir."
"How do you mean?"
"Look, I should probably leave."
"What?"
"No offense. I mean, it's quite nice, having been given an insight into all these people, and I'm sure your motivations were good, for the most part. But I'm straight."
The curator opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out except a croak. His cheeks flushed. Slowly he raised one hand and pointed at Ruebin. "You," he said at last. "You, you, you little shit!"
"Look, there's no ill will here. Let's speak with honesty. And like I said, I appreciate the tour, I do."
The man advanced on him, hand still held up. "Get out," he said, his voice echoing off the walls. "Get out!"
"All right, I'll go," Ruebin said, holding his hands up. "Sorry it wasn't what you wanted."
As Ruebin rushed out, the curator put his hand out towards one of the pillars, as if to steady himself. Unfortunately, in his disarray he missed and leaned on the module itself, which began to slide off the pillar. The last Ruebin saw before heading for the exit was a split second of the curator's small, spindly frame trying to claw back the mass of steel and wires, followed by a loud crash.
"So much for self-destruction," Ruebin said to no one in particular, and left the museum.
It was late in the evening on the ship repair station. At first, the only noticeable movement came from the semiautomated cleaning and safety checking of the walkers, massive ambulatory robots that looked like detached cranes' legs.
One figure moved slowly through the place. Most Ancient, or Jonathan Vesper as he was known to the employment records and nobody else, was doing his very last rounds. Today was the last day of a very long career; tomorrow he would retire.
He was a scrawny white-haired man with a long beard and a calm manner. His speech was measured at all times, and his actions stemmed from a deep confidence in himself and his place in the world. He was meticulous to the point of obsession when it came to cleanliness and order - simplification was his spoken motto - and while he was always a willing teacher, he was also a frustrating one, harping on old theories and unwilling to accept diverging points of view. It was this combination of didacticism and senescence that had earned him his nickname.
His pride and joy was the Row of Wings: A series of ship parts, most of them flat or somehow wing-shaped, on permanent display throughout the repair station. They were set up in a row that snaked its way through the station's main section, and ranged in size from the height of a short man up to the height of a two-story building. He cleaned it every week, without fail, walking through these darkened halls in solitude.
In past times these parts had been used for education, both as reference pieces for rookies and as test housings for new module variations. Each ship part was held in a frame that consisted of a pair of massive clamps on the floor and a wire strung between the part and the nearest wall. When someone wanted to retrieve a part for inspection and experiments, they'd have a walker come over and clasp the selected part with massive robot arms. Then, one of the desk jockeys would flip a switch on an old, outsized control board, the clamps holding the part in place would loosen, the wire would drop from the wall, and the walker would be able to carry the part wherever it was needed.
Those times were drawing to a close, and the parts were now due to be removed. They were part of a fading age where the mechanics had gone in for a more hands-on approach, whereas these days everyone seemed to favor simulations that were long on error margins but short on the human feel for design. When Most Ancient left, the Row of Wings would retire with him.
He didn't mind. People thought he was attached to the Row, and there had been some half-hearted attempts from the older members of the crew to get it turned into a permanent installation, but he had begged off.
He had never told anyone, but what he really was attached to was closure. The end of a lesson; the ordering of a toolbox; the completion of a module; the final moment where a used part was taken in for the last time and turned into scraps; all of these gave him far more satisfaction than indefinite memorials. His greatest joy in life's unspoken poem was placing the period on the end of its line, one sharp swipe of the pen to complete its intricate pattern. The Row was the culmination of years' worth of work and effort, not just a monument to his longevity but a reminder of where he'd come from and what he'd gone through to get there. A warning, as much as a celebration. Looking at it and imagining that it would be there forever, frankly unnerved him.
Everyone else had now left the garage, but he was still there, ordering his things and preparing for tomorrow's sad celebration. Every now and then he fancied he heard something creak in the distance, but he chalked it up to his old ears and to the walkers finishing off their checks.
Like so many mechanics, Most Ancient kept a bunch of small mechanical items in his drawers, both for future reference and remembrance of things past. Many of these items were solid enough that they could be stood up on end. As he pulled open the largest drawer, he heard a click, and was faced with a strange setup: Someone had carefully arranged everything inside in a domino fashion. They stood up one against the other, precariously balanced, and the instant he'd opened the drawer, they toppled, cascading over one another.
There was nothing else in the drawer, no note, no extraneous item, nothing to indicate the who or why.
Most Ancient closed the drawer, carefully put away the rest of his things, and looked around. There was nobody to be seen.
Again, he thought he heard something creaking. He couldn't pinpoint it, but felt that the sound had come from the approximate location of his Row of Wings.
People often thought of him as simple, he knew, and he couldn't disagree. But his simplicity had been earned through years of experience both good and bad. It wasn't the result of being too stupid to understand complexity, he felt, but of being smart or insightful enough to understand it so well that he could simplify it. As a result, he knew what was important and what wasn't, and led his life accordingly. He also knew how people functioned, and how far they would go to do evil things.
Not everyone agreed with his world view, or with his authority. There had been clashes, particularly with some of the younger workers. Recently these clashes had grown more frequent, and more bitter; it was quite clear that certain individuals had started to resent him and the role he played in this company. But as they were too young and immature to truly stand up against him, they attacked him circuitously, like little dogs nipping at the heels of larger prey. They made snide remarks. They laughed. They left trash near his desk; they disordered his things when he wasn't around. One man in particular, Zian, had started acting quite belligerently towards him, and now that Most Ancient thought about it, he realized that Zian had been very vocal about the retirement day, in particular on what a momentous occasion it would be.
What Zian and the rest of them apparently didn't realize was that he'd been young once, too.
And now he was sure that the creaks he'd heard earlier had come from the fastenings that held the Row of Parts in place.
You could say this for the young folks: They knew their equipment. Those endless simulations they liked so much could be used to calculate, to unbelievably small margins of error, the stress necessary to break an item. So if you, say, snuck into a repair shop and borrowed one of the automated Straker saws for a while - those pinpoint precision metal saws with the wafer-thin blades - you could, if you fed it the right data, make it saw into a piece of metal with such accuracy that you could in fact determine ahead of time when and with what kind of pressure the metal would break.
So if you knew, say, that this piece of metal held up an item of a specific weight - say, for instance, an old ship wing - and if you had a strong inkling it would be put under the pressure of an old, wrinkled hand at a certain time of night, cleaning it for the last and final time, you could saw at its fastenings just enough to make the wing topple over at the touch.
Now that he concentrated, as hard as he could, Most Ancient fashioned he could hear tiny, tiny creaks from other support parts as well.
Dominoes. Falling down.
He grinned.
As inconspicuously as he could, he scanned the ceilings. There were security cameras set in every corner, as per standard regulations. Some of them had wider-focus lenses that covered entire sections of the shop, while others autofocused on differing types of movement. There were a couple focused on him now, as they should be, but the instant that a smaller object moved, a subsection of the movement-sensitive cameras should follow it.
He picked up a wrench and held it in his hand as he walked. After a couple of steps he pretended to stumble, and dropped the wrench out of his hand, throwing it in front of him apace. Most of the smaller movement-sensitive cameras immediately followed the wrench, but he noticed two that remained firmly on him. Someone was watching.
Most Ancient picked up the wrench and swiftly walked out of the repair shop and into the armory section, where all the unused equipment was located. Earlier in the day he'd noticed someone depositing an armor rig can - full of tarry liquid necessary for the installation and testing of the rig pumps - and headed directly for it, holding up the wrench. Once he got to the rig cabinet, he again pretended to stumble, falling onto his feet in front of the cabinet and grabbing on to its shelves for support. As he pulled himself up, he snuck a small can of rigging fluid into his pocket, then visibly and shakily deposited the wrench onto the pile of equipment on top of the cabinet. His audience, he was sure, was having a right laugh at the tottering old fool.
They could laugh all they liked, as far as he was concerned. If he couldn't have his simplicity, he would have his closure.
Next he headed over to the desk of Zian, who he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, was one of the people responsible for this whole thing. Aside from being incredibly full of himself, mouthy and impolite to everyone, Zian was quite a bauble collector. His desk was his pride and joy, decorated with a mass of tiny certificates, a bunch of collectibles and art pieces, and all manner of other strange and emotionally valuable things. Most of them were firmly fastened onto the desk in some manner; their owner was so paranoid that he assumed everyone must be interested in stealing his possessions.
Most Ancient didn't intend to steal a thing. If anything, he wanted to keep the man's work environment safe. And since they clearly thought he was a stupid old man, he might as well play the role to the full.
He reached into his pocket and uncapped the armor rig container, turned so that the cameras wouldn't pick up what he was doing, then pulled out the bottle and let it drop to the floor. There was a clank, at which he immediately said, "What's that?" He allowed himself to look around a few times, just to let the bottle empty itself properly. Then he looked down, said loudly, "Oh my gosh, a puddle of armor rigging right by this desk! I'd better clean it up."
He knelt, stared at the puddle for a bit, then stood again and added in the same loud voice, "But I can't, not when it's under this desk. I have to move the darn thing first. The puddle's not going anywhere."
He stalked back into the repair shop, over to the walker section. One of his past accomplishments was a decade spent in the metal saddle, and he'd kept up with the advances in walker technology. He got into one, started it up, and walked back to the desk section. The section was separated from the main garage area by a removable partition; way too heavy for a man, but easy for a walker to pick up and put aside. He reached in, picked up Zian's desk, and carried it out of the desk section. Once it was out, he didn't put it down; instead, he walked over to the final ship wing in the sequence, the biggest on, and put the desk down right beside it.
As late sleepers had found out time and again, the distance between the station's living quarters and the repair shop was deceptively long. Even at a mad run, you had no hope of making it from one point to another in less than ten minutes. Especially if you had been, say, relaxing at home, eating snacks and drinking booze and laughing at some silly old coot bumbling around in the shop.
Most Ancient took the walker back to its storage place, powered it down and got out. Then he added, loudly, "First things first. Before I clean the puddle, I better make sure my old row of ship wings is clean. Otherwise I might forget, old man like me."
He walked over to the cafeteria, noting with much amusement that some of the parts holding up the row of wings were definitely creaking. Clearly, the persons responsible had timed this well.
Once he got to the first part, the small wing standing in the cafeteria, he looked around him for the last time. He noticed that one of the motion-sensitive cameras, one of the ones that had followed him even when he dropped the wrench, was now swiveling back and forth, focusing between the desk and him, the desk and him, in increasingly desperate motions.
He pulled a piece of cloth out of his pocket and began to wipe off the ship part. As he did so, he leaned on the wing just a tad.
There was a crack.
Most Ancient thought of closure, of that one sharp swipe.
He leaned a little harder, and with a screech of breaking metal, the ship wing toppled. It fell onto the next part, whose support parts also gave way from the impact of several tons, and fell onto the next part, which gave way too, until the entire row was cascading down like monstrous dominoes. Most Ancient heard twanging noises that he knew were from support wires snapping, and as he heard the final utter and demolishing crash, as if from a ten-ton ship part utterly disintegrating a prized wooden desk along with everything on it, he fashioned that he could also hear a faint scream in the distance, slowly Dopplering closer.
He closed his eyes and smiled.
The shower sprayed warm water on her crouching form. Rivulets of water ran down her face and into her clothes, soaking them. She rocked back and forth, cooling her back on the metal wall, then warming it up again from the shower's downpour.
Various sensations ran through her body, the foremost of which was tiredness. She didn't know whether to attribute that to adrenaline backwash after the night's events, or if it was merely the usual mental exhaustion from working in the mining colonies. She felt like she could crouch there forever, washing everything away.
Eventually the clinginess of her clothes began to annoy her, so she rose and stripped them off, dropping them where she stood. She glanced down and noticed the tendrils of blood, which were weaving their way from the clothing pile and into the drain. She sighed, and combed her fingers through her hair.
A noise sounded, somewhere far, far off. She ignored it, closing her eyes and turning her face towards the jet of water.
The noise continued; a buzzing, grinding sound, like flies in a jar. Atira rubbed her temples. The noise was supplanted by knocking, first soft, then hammering.
"All right, stop, all right, all right, I give up!" she said and turned off the shower. Squeezing the drops out of her hair, she stalked out of the bathroom and into the corridor without even bothering to pick up a towel. She glared through the peephole in her front door, then opened it.
There stood Caleb, her co-worker. Caleb and Atira were cops in the mining colony's local police force, and their partnership had been forged in its white-hot crucible. It took a special kind of person to last in this job, to learn how to apply the colony's specialized and often brutal form of justice. And it took a special kind of person to back you up while you learned the ropes.
Caleb looked down at her body, then up again into her eyes. His face showed no expression, neither surprise nor interest. Police partnerships excluded every other kind.
"What?" she said.
"Figured I'd make sure you weren't doing anything stupid."
"Such as?"
"Keeping the evidence around. Concocting a story that's going to sound implausible. You tell me." He paused. "You're dripping on the floor."
She looked down, grunted, then walked back into the bathroom. She heard Caleb come in, closing the door behind him. He followed her, walking into the bathroom, and for just a fraction of a second she felt a pang of nervousness over the whole situation. But he didn't spare her a second glance, stalking instead to the shower and turning off the water, then looking down and staring at the pile of clothes.
"I'm going to wash them," she said.
"You better," he said. "And not while you're in them, or all you're doing is spreading his blood over you."
"Look, for crying out loud, relax."
"Where's the body?"
She walked in front of him and stood there, hands on hips. "Hey!" she said. "Do you trust me or not?"
"It's not a question of trust, and you don't even need an answer to that. It's a question of professionalism. We did what we did, and we have to clean up after ourselves, or there'll be trouble."
"I know all this. I just needed to clear my head. I'm not a machine like you are," she said, in a tone that was half frustration, half grudging admiration.
He nodded. "Did you at least take care of the body?"
"Yeah, incinerator. I'm glad I started weightlifting again. The dead are so heavy."
"You know I would have come with you, but I had to make sure we were covered. Alibis don't just make themselves up," he said.
She smiled, put a hand on his shoulder. "I know. I appreciate it, Caleb."
"Anytime. Now will you please wrap yourself in a damn towel or something?"
She laughed at that, raising her hands. "Okay, okay. Right away, sir."
She went into the bedroom to hunt for fresh clothes, and heard his voice shouting after her, "What about the dog tags?"
"In the kitchen!" she shouted back, and heard him walk there. She pulled on some indoors clothes and went to the kitchen, where she found Caleb standing stock still, staring at a small metal bowl. It contained a pair of dog tags, their metal varnish partly eaten away.
"He was a pirate?" Caleb asked.
"Yeah. Spotted the tags right before hauling him into incineration. Good thing, too. They can withstand explosions, so I didn't dare leave them. I'll get some acid from the chemlab tomorrow."
"What is it with these guys?" Caleb said, half to himself. "Even when they're trying to lay low, they get into trouble. Didn't we take down two like him, last month?"
Atira paused, thought. "Yes ... yeah, I think it was two."
"Serves them right. I don't know why they crop up here, but nobody threatens an officer. Don't know where it would end if we let that happen."
"Do you ... do you ever wonder if we've gone too far?" she said.
Caleb looked at her. "No," he said.
"No?"
"If it weren't for us, this place wouldn't even exist. It would've torn itself apart. You know as well as I do that the type of person who goes to work in these colonies isn't the type of person likely to have a stable family life or personality. These people have higher thresholds for everything, including pain and cruelty. Normal human beings you can reason with, sometimes, but these guys won't understand unless you hit them hard. And sometimes you have to go further. This guy followed us around, he threatened you, and he provoked a fight. We cannot stand for that sort of thing here, and this guy, he was a nobody. He won't be missed." He took hold of her shoulders and stared directly into her eyes. "Don't ever doubt yourself, okay? They can feel that. It doesn't matter what you do, or how far you go; what matters is that you react and you don't ever flinch. You are never wrong. Remember that. You are never wrong. "
She returned his stare, and nodded. "Thanks. I needed that."
"All right. You going to be okay over here?"
"Sure. Just need to dissolve this and it'll all be gone."
"Okay. Good." Caleb rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "Listen, take care of yourself. I'm gonna head back, make sure we were somewhere else. See you later."
"Thanks, Caleb," she said, as he left.
After he was gone, Atira rested against the kitchen counter for a while, breathing deep and slow. She still felt in a dark mood, but the worst of it had ebbed away. Caleb's presence was enough; his clarity of purpose focused her own.
The doorbell buzzed again. Atira laughed, walked over to the front door and opened it, getting ready to tell Caleb she wouldn't strip for him a second time. By the time she'd pulled the handle and begun to swing the door open, she realized that she really didn't know who was on the other side, and almost slammed the door in the face of a rather intimidated-looking man.
"Atira Malkaanen? Sorry, am I interrupting?" he asked.
"Yes to the first, no to the second," she said, looking him up and down. He was a middle-aged man, with neither the build nor the dress of a mine worker, and looked quite harmless. Still, she reflected, so had others.
"I'm a resource inspector," the man said. "My name is Johan Serris. As you may know, there've been some concerns about possible water leakage in the area. We've had an absolute bugger of a time trying to find the source, though, and we're reduced to looking at any suspect blip in our readings, no matter how insignificant. Uh, have you noticed anything leaking in your apartment?"
"I was in the shower," Atira said. "Would that do it?"
Johan sighed, and looked downcast. "Ah. Yes, I believe it would."
He fiddled a bit with the hem of his coat, then noticed himself and swiftly placed his hands in his pockets.
"Did you want something else?" Atira said.
"Well ... I know this is a bit of a bother, but might I take a look around, just for appearances' sake? If I can't tell my boss I gave this an inspection, even a cursory one, he'll have my head."
Atira hesitated, but decided that she might as well let the man take a look rather than arouse any kind of suspicion, however small. "Sure, help yourself" she said and, before he could respond, immediately walked out of sight and into the kitchen, where she soundlessly took the murdered man's dog tags and put them in her pocket.
Johan followed, silently looking around. "You keep this place pretty neat," he said.
"Well, you know us women," she said with forced cheer.
Johan nodded and smiled, showing that he didn't. He followed her into the kitchen and looked around, his gaze passing over the empty metal bowl without pause. He turned and stepped into the living room, found nothing of interest in there, took a quick peek into the bedroom and withdrew without comment.
"Well, I think we're good here," he said and clapped his hands, smiling the wide smile of someone who doesn't want to be where he is.
Atira nodded, smiled back and walked towards the corridor, expecting Johan to follow her. He did, but as they passed the bathroom he said, "Oh, mustn't forget!" and before she could stop him he'd ducked inside and taken a look. She rushed after him, thinking up distractions, but by the way he froze up she saw that it was too late.
"What on earth is this?" he asked.
She was filled with an urge to take this little man and put his head through the wall, but fought it down, and quickly tried to think of an excuse.
"I don't believe this," he said. Have you been washing clothes in there?"
She had the sense to look at the ground, feigning deference and biting her lip to hide the smile that wanted to break out. "... Yes," she managed at last. "Yes, I have. Exactly. Gods, how embarrassing."
"Ms. Malkaanen, while I doubt that this habit of yours has anything to do with the water leaks, it sure isn't helping. We have industrial washeries here that'd take care of your laundry in no time. Why don't you use them? Why would you possibly want to waste water and do this in your own home?"
While he was talking Johan had been staring at her. He now glanced back at the pile of clothes, just in time to notice a tiny thread of blood weave its way from it and down the drain.
His eyes widened, and he turned to Atira to say something, but this time she was ready.
She dropped her voice a bit and said, "There was an accident. I'm early."
Johan's mouth shut with a click. He blinked a couple of times, and his Adam's apple bobbed up and down. Then he said, "Right. Okay. Great. I think we're done here. Err, if it happens again, I ... well, nevermind. You do what you need to do."
She smiled demurely. "Thank you. I will."
The inspector made his exit and Atira closed the door behind him. She peered through the door's keyhole, and once she saw that he had left, she leaned against the door and breathed deeply. That, she thought, had been a little too close, though thankfully she now had someone who'd likely vouch for her innocence if it came to that.
She combed her fingers through her hair again, pulling at it to break the knots. Someday she'd get a comb. Perhaps she'd even get some moisturizer for her face, which was dried up by the water. Be ladylike. Keep things properly ordered, and not just drop them anywhere. Like Caleb, who right now was busy ensuring both their alibis for having murdered a man.
It was, she mused as she went into the bedroom, quite unfair that she should have to play on people's faith in her like that.
She knelt in front of her clothes cupboard, opened it and reached deep inside, grabbing hold of a small box that was hidden behind shoes and coats. It was heavy, and its contents clinked as she pulled it out. She removed its lid and dropped the dogtags onto all the others.
People had too much faith, these days.
Two elder statesmen, both of them Minmatar government officials, were walking down by the sea. The negotiations had been hard, what with all the secrecy, and they had begged leave for a breather. Matar was nice and warm this time of year, and the men enjoyed being outside whenever possible. Besides, it did the government good to connect with the people, or at least keep some tabs on them.
They were especially interested in investigating the work of a man named Elbrand Toduin. Elbrand supposedly worked on the beach and created the most marvellous of sand castles, intricate structures that held both expression and functionality. At least, this was what the statesmen had heard, listening in as they did on the talk of their interns. As a result, the two men, Sadrede Svarg and Aduner Hulmkelat, decided to take a long lunch break and pay this Elbrand a visit.
This particular government office on Matar was located quite close to the sea, so it was a short walk. One of the town's shopping districts was located there, so a long road ran parallel to the coastline, dotted on one end with stores of all kinds. On the other lay a wide, well-maintained sidewalk, with a snack vendor here and there. Beyond the sidewalk was the beach, and the ocean.
The sidewalk was kept at a higher level than the beach. At regular intervals there would be an offshoot, a concrete pier shaped like a T that bisected the beach and led straight into the ocean. This pier included stairs down to the beach, and hooks and other equipment for boats that wanted to moor there.
There weren't many people about - it was a workday, after all - but the sun was out and the sea breeze kept things nicely cooled, so a few souls were idly wandering down the walkways. These included some youngsters dressed in the increasingly popular tribal gear, some of them even sporting what Aduner hoped were fake tribal tattoos.
The two statesmen noticed a small crowd clustered by one of the branches that lead into the sea, and headed over there.
The crowd stood on the part of the walkway where the beach turned to shoal. They all looked over the edge, leaning on the handrails. Sadrede couldn't get close enough, but Aduner, being a bit more lithe, insinuated his way into the crowd and looked over the handrails.
Far below stood Elbrand, a small figure among the vast constructs of sand, and once Aduner's eyes drifted up to them, his heart sank. It seemed impossible that such a tiny figure could create such gargantuan monstrosities, but there they were.
The first was a giant of near-infinite complexity, his body a composite of famous Minmatar people, symbols and even slogans. Legs were Khuumaks, with the knee joints fashioned into the heads of the two people who had stood at Drupar's side as he struck his fateful blow, while Drupar's own face was visible in the midst of the figure's torso. Other faces could be made out at various parts, as if surfacing from the ocean. The figure's arms were decorated with tribal tattoos, some of which, Aduner noted with alarm, spelled out slogans of hatred and war, and many of which were combined into one cryptic figure. And yet there was no overarching theme, no central message in the complexity as far as Aduner could see. All he could make out was a hopelessly disunited hodgepodge of anger, a torrent of misdirected frustration that would leave nothing of value in the minds of admirers. He shook his head. Temperance was the way, not excess. It was small comfort that the monstrous construct would be washed away at high tide, for there was nothing stopping its creator from remaking it again and again; a cycle of birth for something better left cooling in the grave.
The second was a far sleeker item, though it unnerved Aduner. It was a sea serpent, its massive head defying gravity as it rose from the sand, its lithe body trailing in diminishing half-moons that implied the thing didn't so much swim as undulate. Aduner hated snakes, and he immediately disliked this creature. It glistened with some sort of bonding agent - nothing this big could be left untouched - that only served to add another reptilian aspect to its being.
There were slight pockmarks in the creature's cheek, from where Elbrand's ladder had presumably touched it before he applied the bonding agent. The serpent's head was moulded in explicit detail, not only in the rows of worn teeth visible through its open mouth, or in the veins of its eyes under slanted, angry-looking brows, but in the way it managed to indicate both stillness and action simultaneously. It looked poised to attack, and yet it also looked as if it were only travelling the seas, minding it own business. It reeked of power and potential.
And then there was the fire. Elbrand had placed inflammatory agents in the serpent's nostrils and set them alight, resulting in a steady outpour of flame and greyish smoke. Bizarrely, Aduner felt that they simultaneously made the serpent both more and less threatening. They underlined its nature, and its danger, and in so doing presented a sharper likeness of the real thing, but the more this sand construct looked like a sea serpent, the more Aduner was reminded that it was only a sand construct. And yet, it made him uneasy. It felt as if a thing so real, particularly a thing that in its realness was so patently fake, couldn't possibly be anything but real.
Aduner disliked it so much that he was about to turn away without even looking at the third sand sculpture, but at that point Sadrede finally emerged from the throng and took a place at the handrails by Aduner's side. Aduner saw his co-worker's expression harden as Sadrede took in the sculptures.
"This is ... unfortunate," Sadrede said.
Aduner nodded. He was struck with the feeling that this was something they would need to discuss very seriously at some later point, and thus willed himself to turn and look at the third sculpture.
At first glance it was practically serene compared to the others; a large construct almost monolithic in shape, resembling a stone-age palace. The building blocks were, fittingly, rock-like in shape and surface. Each one of them had a distinct surface, as if a team of sawyers had been at work, and even the mortar around them had lines and ridges in it. One half expected to see a bunch of trowels lying nearby.
Aduner found it surprisingly pleasant, and it wasn't until his eyes drifted to the building's roots that he spotted the anomaly. A sand figure of a Minmatar boy stood in front of the building, leaning up against it. The boy's pants were around his ankles. His face, even from this distance, clearly registered extreme glee, and no wonder: In front of him stood the sand head of an Amarrian, looking as if he'd been buried up to his neck, and a constant stream of water fountained from the boy's midsection, curved up in the air, and hit the Amarrian directly on the top of his bald, granular head. Aduner noticed that several large buckets of water stood around the sand construct, and he suspected that if he were to see the building from the back, there'd be visible some clever aqueductal design involving leaky buckets and plastic pipes. He found it immensely disappointing, not threatening in the least but merely sad: A creation that showed such promise at first glance, only to show itself to be a facade, good for little more than short-lived amusement.
The people, of course, loved it all, and tossed coins on a blanket laid down on the sand.
As one, Aduner and Sadrede turned and made their way out of the crowd, back to the centre of the pier. Aduner wanted to say something to someone, but couldn't find it in him. Sadrede was still deathly quiet, and Aduner knew from experience that he needed only a catalyst to explode into someone's face.
Before Aduner could do anything, Sadrede made a beeline for a nearby dancer. The Minmatar had a tradition of physical expression ranging all the way from the delicate, symbolic flights of trained dancers to the coarse, even violent, dances of tribal warriors. This one, plying his trade on a frictionless mat, was doing the exhibition form of Ruhste, an old and extremely physical dance art that more often than not had the exhibitor spinning in the air. It had been banned during the Amarr occupation due to fears that it might be used as a tool to train fighters, but was now permitted as a cultural sport, although the government had adamantly refused to give it any grants or official backing.
The dancer slowed when Sadrede approached him, but didn't stop. Sweat poured off him and onto the mat, and it was a wonder he could even keep his balance, let alone perform his feats. From a distance, Aduner noticed that the mat was decorated with the same tribal symbols as the first sand statue had been, in particular the composite one showing all the symbols as one figure.
The beginning of the exchange was said in low tones, so Aduner didn't catch it. By the time he'd caught up with Sadrede, though, his co-worker was shouting.
"All these public displays mean nothing and only serve to aggravate the wrong people," Sadrede yelled at the dancer. "You don't do anything to further our cause, and you certainly don't ensure the safety of our people."
The dancer, still now and entirely calm, laughed in his face. "And you do?"
Sadrede was speechless. The dancer returned to his art, his supple body revolving in tune to some inner rhythm, picking up the pace until he was leaping up from the ground, stabbing at the air with his hands and feet like a dragon taking flight.
It occurred to Aduner that were they to meet the man in a place with no witnesses, the exchange might go quite a bit differently. There were layers to the dancer's actions. The Ruhste was art, but it was one that presented violence in terms of aesthetics. The onlooker would see a performance that resembled combat, and if he looked closely, he would see that the underlying foundation was, in fact, still aesthetic: Art presenting violence that presented itself as art. But Aduner suspected there was yet another layer to the performance. If a man had conditioned himself to such a degree that his actions, presented as mock violence, appeared as art, then such a man might well possess the aptitude for real violence, along with the ability to present it in such a way that the casual onlooker would see only the surface layers and nothing more. What better way to hide your lethality than present it to the world, and in so doing, make the world think you were merely pretending?
His thoughts got no further. Sadrede, still too angry for words, stomped off, and Aduner followed.
And that would have been that, if they hadn't seen the kid with the ChromIts.
The ChromIts were a popular Minmatar children's toy. They came in packs of twenty little magnetic silver orbs, with accessories that included a tiny docking station shaped like a twofold pencil sharpener, and a small self-standing projector that cast ultraviolet light. When a pair of orbs were placed in the dock for a minute, they would warm up slightly. Afterwards, if you touched two of them together, then gently drew them apart, they would trail between them a gossamer filament that extruded from tiny holes on their surface. The filament would remain taut at all times, could be stretched out almost indefinitely, and would harden into a firm stem when passed under the cure of ultraviolet light, resulting in a tiny baton-shaped unit.
There were two kinds of structures one could create from ChromIts, hot or cold. The hot one involved building the wireframe sequentially, adding one more orb to the structure each time. The cold one was far more difficult, where one created several two-orb batons, then used the orbs' magnetic properties to stick them together. The magnetism meant that a wireframe of even moderate size had to have equalized pressure from all sides, since it took very little force for the magnetized orbs to slide off one another and collapse the entire structure onto itself.
It was not uncommon for children to possess thousands of little ChromIts, particularly in engineer families, and the creation of new structures and items from them was a popular hobby. Cold joins were far more structured and difficult, and revered as such, whereas hot joins, being freed from the normal rules of physics and structural engineering, tended more towards artistry and originality.
And in a corner of the pier, the two men saw the antithesis of the Dionysian dancer they'd left behind: A child that couldn't be more than six or seven, sitting with a pile of ChromIts, and doing a cold join of something that looked remarkably like a Typhoon.
Sadrede, of course, got there first.
"That's amazing!" he said. "What's your name?"
"Bryld," the child said.
"And you did this all by yourself?" Sadrede asked.
"Yeah."
"May I see it?"
The child wordlessly handed him the frame.
Sadrede inspected it with due reverence. "It's very nice," he said. "Your parents must be proud. Do you often make spaceships?"
"It's not a spaceship," Bryld said.
"Really?" Aduner interjected. "Fooled me. What is it?"
The child looked him over, then apparently decided he was trustworthy. "It's a wireframe hulk."
Their blank stares propelled the kid to continue, "My dad's an engineer. And he's always saying that the biggest problems with the broken big ships is that they're so hard to manure."
"Manoeuvre," Sadrede said, but Aduner hushed him.
"So he says that sometimes they need to be towed in zero-g. But if they're too broken then there's no way to do that, 'cause they'd fall apart. So he's trying to design these hulks, like skeletons on the outside of a ship, dad says, that can be put on it so that it doesn't fall to bits when it's moved. And I'm trying to help him. And dad says it's gonna have to be made with something like ChromIts, because dad says the trick is to use as little material as you can, and just place it at the right spots on the ship so that it'll click together."
"You've cold joined a model for a new type of zero-g repair frame," Aduner said in astonishment. "How long have you been doing this? How old are you?"
"Two weeks. Seven. My dad says I'm smart."
"I'll say. I don't know any seven-year-olds who can do anything for two weeks straight, let alone structural engineering."
The kid grinned, and held out his hands for the model.
Sadrede returned it with a smile. He said to Aduner, "See, this is what it should be about. No war, no threats, just thoughtful, peaceable work. This is what we should be doing. There's hope yet."
Aduner nodded. Something was bothering him, but he couldn't quite put a finger on it. "And the sand builder?" he said.
Sadrede waved an arm expansively towards the oceans. "He'll be washed away with the floods, as all these worries are eventually. All we need do is wait."
"Bryld, may I see the hulk again, please?" Aduner said. The child obliged.
Aduner minutely inspected the model. "I won't ruin it, I promise," he said. "But ... look, these joints here. And here, and here. How did you get them to hold? I didn't know cold joining could work like that."
The kid's smile faded a little. He didn't say anything.
Aduner gently pulled apart one of the joins, and saw that there was something holding them together, sticky gossamer that trailed in the breeze.
"This is hot joining," Aduner said. "And you've mixed it with glue."
"Oh, that doesn't matter," Sadrede said with high cheer. "It's still a grand piece."
"Hm. Yes, I suppose it is," Aduner said.
Sadrede clapped him on the shoulder, a little too hard for his liking. "Come on. The child is seven. Even if it's not perfect, he's allowed to take a few shortcuts."
"Are we?" Aduner said, but he knew it was unfair. "Never mind. Here, Bryld. You've done a wonderful job." He handed the wireframe back to the kid, who sat down and started tinkering with it again. It was only a child's toy, but Aduner nevertheless felt immensely disappointed, and in turn frustrated at that disappointment. He was growing tired of illusions, and the things they hid.
"Let's head back," he said. Sadrede nodded, and in step they began the walk back to the government offices. It was time to resume the negotiations, and neither Karin Midular nor the envoys who'd secretly flown in to see her would have much patience for tardiness.
From his mat, the dancer quietly watched them go.
And when the two harlots had been carted off, thrashing and crying and screaming, and their baby sent to be cut in half, Aritcio leaned back on his throne and was pleased.
"I like being Heir," he murmured sotto voce to his military advisor, a thin man in tight-fitting clothes and a tight-fitting face. To his other side stood the religious advisor, a woman with her hair set up in a tight bun and held in place with two golden miniature spears.
The military advisor nodded. "We have more cases, milord."
"Oh, good."
The gigantic doors opened slowly. They were bronze, and decorated with all manner of religious icons. As might be expected, Doriam II figured quite heavily; his appearance and highlights of his reign dominated the aeneus reaches of both doors. It was tradition that they be opened to let in each new complainant but closed right after. The only exception was for those cases where the grievance was so vast that the horde of plaintiffs would fill the royal court, in which case the doors were kept open for onlookers. Those cases were rare: These days, the only people who put their fate in the hands of Aritcio were the ones who'd been practically forced there at gunpoint. You could refuse his judgment, of course, and you would be summarily executed for your trouble.
A young man walked in, hesitantly. He was dressed as a Holder nobleman, but his hair was unkempt and there were dark patches under his eyes.
"You, I don't recognize," Aritcio said.
The man kneeled in front of Aritcio and said, "I'm Fazian Shalah, milord. I have not been in your presence before."
"And what is your complaint?"
Fazian rose again. "Milord, I-"
He was momentarily distracted by a noise outside, a faint roar dopplering on the windows, then continued, "Milord, I am desperate. I have had my property confiscated, my accounts frozen, all my business brought to a halt."
Aritcio gave a thin smile. "And why is this?"
"I, uh ... in all honesty, milord, it was a moment of stupid drunken revelry. I made a rather impolite comment about Serude Sakekoo."
The military advisor leaned in and whispered to the heir, "She's head of the Imperial Chancellor."
Aritcio raised an eyebrow. "Rather?"
"Yes. Well. Very."
"Would you care to repeat the comment?"
Fazian swallowed audibly. "In all honesty, milord, I'd rather not. It had to do with the forehead decoration she wears, and what I think it looks like. But I'd really not want to repeat it."
"Good. That's good," Aritcio said in amused fashion, wagging a finger at him. "You're learning."
"Every day, milord. But I'm repentant now, and desperate. I cannot feed my children, no one dares loan me money, and none of my contacts are of any use. Milord, I beg you, please intervene."
Aritcio glanced at his religious advisor. "What do you say, dear? Should I intervene?"
"I'm sure milord will make the correct judgment, as always," she replied in a resigned fashion.
Apparently pleased with the reaction, Aritcio turned back to the Holder. "I think it was petty revenge by the Imperial Chancellor to put you through this. I hereby proclaim that your accounts shall be unfrozen, your property returned or you be reimbursed by the claimants with an equivalent monetary sum, and that you be restored in full glory to your former place through whatever other recourse deemed necessary by an independent party."
Fazian fell to his knees again. "Oh, thank you, milord. Thank you so much. I shall remember this forever."
"Yes, I do believe you will. Stand up, please. I trust you have learned your lesson in manners and discretion."
"I have, milord, I have," Fazian said, standing. "Thank you so much."
"Don't mention it. But to ensure that this lesson remains learned, I will have your lips cut off. Next."
The Holder, stunned in disbelief - a fairly common reaction in Aritcio Kor-Azor's court - was led out by guards. The instant the doors opened, the noise outside rose to a dull roar.
"What is that?" Aritcio asked.
His military advisor gave a faint shrug. "Nothing of concern, I'm sure, milord," he said, then gave one of his men a brief look. The man immediately made an exit through a side door.
The bronze doors started to open.
"Milord, the next man is a mime, and-"
"Cut out his tongue and make him eat it. Next!"
The doors closed again.
The guard sent out by the military advisor returned, walked to the advisor and whispered into his ear. The advisor whispered hastily back, but was interrupted by Aritcio.
"Is there anything I should be concerned about?" the Heir asked.
"No, not in the least," the advisor replied. "But it would appear we have a special visitor on the way."
"Oh?"
"A Speaker of Truths."
The religious advisor stiffened up, but said nothing.
The roar outside couldn't be ignored any longer. It was as if a tsunami were about to wash over the palace. The guards looked to one another, though they remained firmly rooted in place. And outside the doors there now sounded ... not screams, not yells, but a hoarse barrage of noise, as if the first wave were about to come crashing in.
There was a thunderous roll of staccato knocks on the doors, made by innumerable fists.
Aritcio shifted slightly in his chair. "I suppose we had better open," he said.
The doors slowly parted, revealing an agitated mass of people outside. The guards put their hands on their weapons, but the military advisor raised a hand. "Steady, now," he said.
A small figure detached itself from the group and walked into the court. It was an old man, wizened and grey, in the traditional robe of high religious officials. He walked with the aid of a tall staff, the head of which curled into a circle.
"Speaker of Truths," the religious advisor said in awe.
"The same," the man replied and smiled kindly to her. "I wish this were an informal visit, seeing as how I haven't been here in, oh, a century now at least. But as you can see from my fellow visitors, we are now forced to deal with a very serious matter."
As he spoke, several members of the mob marched in his wake. They were all Holders and as such were allowed to enter the court unimpeded; refusal of entry to a Holder was considered an offence, although once let in, the Holder could be removed at the Heir's whim without consequence.
The Holders, roughly two dozen, formed a half-circle around the Speaker. All faced the throne, staring fixedly at Aritcio. The doors were kept open, as per tradition when a full house was at hand, and several members of the mob held activated video cameras. In deference to the Heir's presence, they kept their hands over the camera lenses, but the microphones were very much active.
"What's this?" Aritcio said. "Why are you here?"
"I'm surprised to be here at all," the Speaker said. "Certain parties seemed intent on ending my journey prematurely."
"That doesn't answer my question," Aritcio said.
"No, milord. It doesn't. But now you have answered one of mine."
"Make sense, man."
"Very well," the Speaker said. He gestured at the people behind him. "These men and women have grievances which must be righted. The ones in the corridor have ones of their own. And that roar you hear outside, that's from the ones who heard of my trip here and decided to follow. I have travelled a long way, milord, and the journey has been fraught with danger, even more so than I expected when I set out."
He marched closer to the throne, stopping short of the steps that led up to it. He spread his arms, opening them as one might when welcoming back a lost soul, or equally when proclaiming its banishment. His voice, though far from loud, was heard clearly; it was the only sound in the room apart from the hum of recorders and the muted noise of the people outside. "As to why I am here, milord, it's really quite simple. I have come to kill you."
No one said a word. For a few moments, no one even breathed.
Then the silence was punctured by a noise: a choked, high pitched giggle that turned into a rasping neigh, then a guffaw. Aritcio laughed so hard, he nearly fell out of his chair. "You?!" he fairly screamed at the Speaker. "You're mad, old man. You're mad!"
"Be that as it may, I appear not to be the only one," the Speaker said, quite calmly.
Aritcio, trying unsuccessfully to put on a serious expression, said, "Who sent you?"
"Why ... you did, milord."
"What? Oh heavens, this keeps getting better."
The Speaker turned to the people with him, pointing at a man standing to his right. "This is Rakban Vennegh," the Speaker said. "His father was put to death for theft, on the word of a man nobody but you has ever seen. Beside him stands Suki Natasa. Her son was tortured for flying a kite into the trees of the royal yard, and now does nothing but stare at the wall. And over there is Etu Gassa, whose beauty charmed you so that you ordered she be forced to dance naked in the court square every day at noon, in order that she not selfishly keep her beauty to herself. You had her husband murdered, too, on account of his selfishness of keeping her all to himself. Everyone in this room, this palace, this entire place has been hurt by you, or has a loved one who's been hurt by you. Every one of them, milord." The Speaker spoke in a quiet monotone, but there was a barely detectable emphasis on the milord honorific.
"You created this," the Speaker continued. "If I am here, milord, it is because you called me here, even if you were not aware of it. The Speakers are arbitrators second only to the Emperor, and we go where we are needed."
He adjusted his cloak slightly, and said, "Right now, milord, there's an army of people outside who want restitution for your acts. More specifically, they want your blood."
Aritcio said, "Fat chance."
The military advisor added, "He is an Heir to the throne. They cannot touch him."
The Speaker of Truths fixed him with a steely glance. "As a matter of fact, milord, they can."
Before they had a chance to respond, he said, "I'm not sure whether you're aware of an old religious law - actually, to be honest, I'm perfectly sure that you weren't, because otherwise we'd never have descended to state of affairs - a religious law whereby an injured party can claim restitution from the injurer, in the form of flesh and blood. Eye for an eye, pound of flesh, pluck out his eye, etcetera."
The religious advisor said, "We're aware of that law. It's from the oldest texts, those of the angry god. It has no real bearing here."
"Oh, but it does," the Speaker said. "Should someone be harmed beyond reason by an outsider, and should the act be judged as unreasonable by an official arbitrator, the law of restitution can be invoked. Official arbitrators are the Emperor, of course, along with the five Heirs, certain Holders. And the Speakers of Truth."
"You are not touching me," Aritcio said.
"He can't do a thing to you, milord," the religious advisor said to Aritcio. She turned to the Speaker. "You've left out half the law. There is a sliding scale."
"Indeed there is," the Speaker said. "And it says that if an act has been judged reasonable, the restitution takes into account the social positions of both victim and perpetrator. If perpetrator is markedly higher, the amount of restitution, the pound of flesh if you will, shrinks accordingly. If a commoner were to claim restitution from the Emperor, he might receive it, but it would be an infinitesimal speck, little more than a flake of skin from the hands of his Holiness."
Aritcio said, "So what's the problem? Even with the people outside, you'd hardly have enough to give me a haircut."
The Speaker replied, "These are just the ones who joined in my march. Word is reaching us from everywhere in the area. There are a lot of people who are very angry at you, milord, and should they all stake their claim at once, you will be reduced to atoms."
Aritcio, who had grown increasingly sombre in tone, turned to his religious advisor. "Is this true?" he said. "Does this man, this ... this Speaker of Truths," he spat the word, "does he have judgment rights?"
The religious advisor said nothing, merely closed her eyes and nodded.
Aritcio turned to his military advisor. "Does he?"
The advisor was stunned. "Well, I don't, that is, well-"
"Answer me. Does this man have the power to bring me to execution?"
The military advisor lowered his head, stared at the floor. "Yes, milord. I do believe he does."
Aritcio turned back to the Speaker. "I don't see why I should act according to your demands. Why shouldn't I simply have my guards execute you?"
"If they attack me," said the Speaker, "not only will they be excommunicated and their names stricken from the Book of Records, their lives and personas becoming nonentities, but you will have gone against the word of a Speaker, which means that you risk being stricken from the Book of Records as well. You would be dethroned, milord, and stripped of your rights and your immunity. I do not imagine you would stand much of a chance afterwards."
The Speaker closed his eyes, breathed in deeply, then said, "This is it, milord. This is the end of the road. This is the sins come back to ruin."
"It's an uprising, is what it is."
"No, milord. It's a revolution."
Silence descended again. Not even the roar could be heard now. There was the hum from video cams, whose recordings were undoubtedly being broadcast to the hordes outside and to a myriad of homes elsewhere.
The military advisor stepped forth. "We ... can't let this happen," he said. "If the Heir is dethroned, if there truly is a revolution, then the house will fall. Outside forces-," he didn't say the other houses, but it was on his mind as well as everyone else's, "Outside forces will destroy us. The Heir may have angered people in his time of rule, but we have to find some way to preserve him. We must. If not, if we go the path of open revolt and regicide, our people will forfeit any chance of having him or any other Heir ascend to the throne in future times."
The Speaker leaned on his staff. "And what do you suggest, then?"
"Is there ... no, I know there is no chance that the people will be dissuaded from this," the advisor said. "But are there some that might be persuaded to wait?"
There was a roar outside.
"All right, perhaps not that many," the advisor conceded. "But still. Are these people willing to risk the repercussions of a bloody revolt? Will they suffer through the economic turmoil that's sure to follow, and the possibility of military interaction? Will they risk their livelihoods, and their very lives?"
"They will not be dissuaded from their claim," the Speaker warned, quite calmly. "That much has become clear."
"Then grant us this," the advisor said. "Have those people come forth who have the most grievous claims. Let them have their retribution. But please, for the love of the house and everyone in it, let the Heir live."
"I agree," Aritcio said, and was ignored.
"I don't know if the people will agree to that," the Speaker said.
"I hope they will. Because even if the Heir won't die, we will bring him to the point of oblivion."
"What?" Aritcio said.
The advisor continued, "If a million comes forth, then we shall remove an arm. If another million comes forth, we shall remove a leg. We shall cut and cut and cut, we shall rend flesh and drain blood until there is nothing left but the bare essentials."
"Are you insane?" Aritcio said.
"All I ask, for all our sakes, is that there be enough for the Heir to live, and continue functioning to some degree. After all, a person needs not limbs to govern, nor all his senses. One eye suffices; one ear; and some remains of tongue, teeth and skin."
"I'm not standing for this," Aritcio said.
The advisor turned to him and said, "Then you will die, milord. They will tear you to pieces."
"You will tear me to pieces."
"At least this way, there will be something left, milord. And we can regrow the rest."
The Speaker said, "Cloning is forbidden. You know that."
"Only if the person dies," the advisor said. "But if we keep him alive and put him through accelerated cellular regrowth, we violate no law, and the people can have their pound of flesh."
"Do you think that's enough?" the Speaker said.
"Honestly? No," the advisor replied.
"I'm still here, if anyone wondered." Aritcio said.
The advisor turned to him, "Milord, as much as I love and honour you, we are on the brink of a revolution that could have your head a spike in a heartbeat. Do you understand the situation? Do you understand that if there is any kind of dissatisfaction with its outcome, you will die?"
Aritcio fell silent.
The advisor turned back to the Speaker. "If he should make any kind of decision that the people greatly disfavour," the advisor said, "then they can come in en masse and demand their restitution."
"And, with it, his life," the Speaker said.
"And his life," the advisor said. "Do you think the people will settle for that? A new ruler, to replace the old. A new man. In every sense of the word."
The Speaker gave this due thought. Aritcio had fallen silent.
"Yes," the Speaker said at last. "Yes, I believe they will."
The hordes outside raised their voices again, so loud that the palace floor trembled. But they were not roars this time. They were cheers.
***
Aritcio lay strapped down on a surgeon's table. Video cameras had been affixed to the ceiling, and a small one to the surgeon's forehead.
Using an electric scalpel, the surgeon slowly and methodically cut off pieces of Aritcio's skin. The Heir's blood was immediately sucked up by a proliferation of plastic tubes that fed it into a dialysis machine, from where it was pumped back into his body.
No anaesthesia was applied. The Heir had a rubber mouth guard affixed to his mouth with leather straps, and bit down on it with such force that veins stood out in his forehead. With each cut there was a raspy noise that onlookers had at first thought to be disturbance in the audio section of the broadcast, but turned out to be the Heir's hoarse voice, screams that got no further than his throat.
Sometimes the doctors would use lasers, so as to immediately cauterize the wounds, but since lasers also killed nerves, the public had deemed it grossly unsatisfactory. Scalpels were now the tool of choice.
The military and religious advisors sometimes attended the sessions, watching dispassionately as their master was dismembered. The religious advisor had made no comment since the sessions started. The military advisor had said little, too, except for a brief, secret conversation with the head physician and certain military personnel, where it had been explained to the full understanding of everyone involved that the Heir would not die. And should he expire, well, his captors and caretakers were expected to take whatever steps necessary to ensure he would live again, regardless of personal morals and religious law.
Aritcio himself said little as well. There was such demand for his elements that he hardly had any time to rule at all.
The surgeon cleaned his scalpel, and spoke slowly into the camera. "That's the last finger skinned. Notice the tendons. We'll be working on those next."
The waiting lounge was cold. There was little ornamentation here, and the only concessions to comfort were plastic seats on metal bars that were bolted to the floor. A massive window made of transparent alloy showed the traffic out in space, convoys approaching and leaving.
Tim sat on one of the plastic seats and fidgeted with the hem of his robe. He felt tired and worn, a long way from home, and unsure of where home was at all. Every now and then he would get up and pace around the place, staring out the window at the nothingness beyond, or look down the corridors to the people passing by in distant lives and alternate timelines. Everything passed slowly here, in the waiting lounge.
There were no holoreels or any other entertainment playing. This was a place of empty waiting, not of recreation. Other lounges had more ornate decoration, but they cost more and, to Tim, were pointless. As barren as this place was, for the kind of trip he was on - heading back broke from unsuccessful seminars, and nursing a broken heart - it was the only valid option for him.
A sound, a small growl, startled him. He looked to the source and saw that an old man had taken a seat at the edge of the row. The man held a hand in front of his mouth and cleared his throat again, a deep, phlegmic rattle. He didn't appear to have noticed Tim, and sat quite still in his seat, staring out through the window.
Tim, a little unnerved at not even having heard the man sit down, wondered whether to approach him, then decided against it. He turned away and began pacing about again, when he heard the man say, "You going to mope around like that all day?"
"What?" Tim said.
The man, without turning his head, said, "I don't even have to look at you to know you're wearing a hole in the floor. Sit down before you lose your legs."
Tim walked over to him, not sure whether to answer with indignity or politeness, when he noticed that the left side of the man's face was overtaken by an implant.
The man followed his gaze and said, "Ah, hell. Don't you look at this as a handicap. My vision is fine."
"What happened?" Tim asked.
"Life happened, son. It gets you that way. Sit down."
Tim sat.
"Thanks. Not that I'm your boss, but I don't much care for looking at the stars while someone paces about behind me like a wild animal on the prowl."
"Sure," Tim said, still trying not to stare.
"Braten," the man said.
"Sorry?"
"Braten. Braten Fahr. It's a traditional thing, where I give my name, and you give yours in return."
"Oh. Yes, of course. Tim. Shema."
"Pleased to meet ya, Tim," Brater said and extended a hand, which Tim shook.
"Likewise," Tim said. Now that he'd had a moment to get accustomed to the situation, he felt a lot more comfortable. This was just some old man, waiting for his ride on one of the cheap flights. Nobody here but him and Tim, and somehow that made the solitude even more apparent. He probably wouldn't have spoken to this man under normal circumstances, but in this time and place, his gruffness seemed quite appropriate and not at all confrontational.
They sat in silence, looking out at the stars.
Eventually Brater said, "I'm an old man. Don't have long to live now. So I can wait around spaceport lounges if I damn well please. What's your excuse?"
Tim thought about this, then said, "There was this girl..." He let the sentence hang in the air like a war-torn flag.
Brater's expression softened somewhat. "Everything starts that way, doesn't it?"
"Yeah. I suppose it does," Tim said. There was another a pause while they watched a spacecraft fly by, headed for the docking ports.
Tim added, "I've been on the run for a while now, though I really don't know what from. Just general running, I suppose. And recently, I met this very nice woman called Liandra." He sat back in his chair, sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. "First time we spoke I got a few words in before a friend of hers came over, another woman, and threatened to have me murdered. Turns out they were both kill agents."
Brater laughed, a deep, quiet rumble. "That's sticking your head in the fire."
"Yeah," Tim said. "I went my own way, didn't think much about it-"
"Liar," Brater said, not unkindly.
Tim stopped, hesitated. "Well, all right. I thought about it for quite a while. How'd you tell?
"You seem a decent fellow. Too nice for your own good. You mull over things, I'll bet."
Tim sighed. "I suppose I do. You're the same?"
"Nope," Brater said and grinned. "But I can recognize a moper from a mile away."
"Heh."
"So what happened?"
"I met her again a few days after," Tim said. "Or, rather, she met me. Without her friend, and looking a fair bit more relaxed than when I first met her. She asked if she could join me for coffee, and I said yes."
"Where were you headed, at the time?"
"Into low sec areas. I work for a non-profit organization. A bit of missionary work, a bit of social improvements."
Brater looked him up and down. "You're certainly dressed the part. Those heathens you were converting, not much for showers or washing machines?"
Tim laughed. "No, I suppose not. I have this tendency to let my appearance slide, too. Sometimes it's just too much effort."
"Washing yourself is no effort at all."
"That's what I'm saying," Tim said.
Brater stared hard into his eyes. "Hard to get up in the mornings sometimes, is it?"
"You said it."
"And you daren't stop once you've gotten moving."
"Precisely. Hence my career," Tim said. It felt good to talk about the depression, he found, especially to someone he'd probably never meet again. "I have to keep moving. Doesn't matter to where, just so long as it's away."
"From everything."
"Yes."
"Including your girl."
"... eventually, yes. It didn't work out," Tim said.
"So I gathered."
"She's a wonderful woman," Tim added. "But she's driven and smart and has this hard, hard core that no one could penetrate. Or, not me, at least. And even though I'm no slacker, she couldn't stand how I never seemed to put any work into myself. She's not unsympathetic. But I think that when she saw other people buckling under the weight of their problems, it was a constant reminder that the same could happen to her."
"So was it worth it?" Brater asked.
"I don't know, man. I don't know," Tim said.
"That means it was," Brater said.
"I don't-... well, you think?"
"Sure. Few things are good through and through. It's all experience in the end."
"I don't know," Tim said again. "I think love can leave a sting that lasts a long time. It can leave you worse off than when you started."
Brater shook his head. "It doesn't. That sting you feel isn't because you fell in love; it's because you were reminded how bad off you were before love took you in its arms for a while."
"Even so," Tim said. "All it grants you is a momentary feeling that's surrounded by numbness both before and after. Isn't the numbness preferable? Just like when you're drowning, you just get real peaceful and calm."
Brater gave him a strange look, then turned his head away. He inhaled, as if to say something, then slowly exhaled and simply said, "No."
A buzzing sound emanating from the distance became a little louder. A second later there floated overhead three small drones, each the size of a fist. They were on security patrol, although they didn't actually have any offensive capabilities. Smaller drones had existed for years, as toys and such, but the larger type was a novelty, a side product of the recent advances in invention. They were being tried out as remote-controlled security monitors, the idea being that their human operators could get closer to hot zones in this manner than regular security cameras allowed, and that you'd be more likely to behave properly with the possibility of these things swooping in to taser you. While they were being tested out, though, the drones would do nothing but fly around, floating on their own currents and look more menacing than they were.
"My wife drowned," Brater said.
Tim stared at him. "Shit," he said at last.
Brater replied, "Oh, I don't think she did that. It'd have embarrassed her half to death." Then he added, "Don't look at me that way. I'm the one who lost her. I'm allowed to make bad jokes."
"What happened?" Tim asked.
"Accident. Sailing trip, which I normally detested, but we'd won it as some huge prize and the wife was all agog to try it. Biggest company on the planet was a sponsor, big hullabaloo, cameras all around. When the time comes, we're all packed and taking the steps aboard, there's a misfire in one of the ship's engines and it jerks away from shore, tearing up the boarding walks and dropping us into the sea. The luggage falls on top of us, along with the boarding walks, keeping us from reaching one another. I clamber up and start yelling for people to get my wife out. Then the stupid idiot moron captain compensates for the drift by firing up other engines and moving the ship closer to harbour, not having realized that there was still someone overboard. Eight thousand tons of deadweight pin my wife against the harbour wall, crushing the life out of her. And all the while, dozens of cameras are shooting her last seconds alive, with millions of people watching. Someone reaches the captain and screams to him to stop the ship, so he fires up the engines again and tries to turn it away, but the engines need time to turn and all they end up doing is providing one final push that makes my wife vomit her guts out into the ocean, before the ship drifts away, leaving her to sink in a fading red pool."
Tim, flailing for logic, grasped the one detail in this story that his mind would let him comprehend. "Why'd you detest sailing trips?"
Brater snorted. "Because I've been a ship captain all my life. The sea's not a place of vacation to me."
"What is it, then?"
"The beginning and end of everything," he said without pause.
Tim said, "Well ... I don't know. I'm sorry to hear about what happened, really sorry. But that sounds stupid to say, and I'm sure you've already dealt with it in your own way."
"True enough," Brater said. "Company gave me a huge settlement. With the media angle it was the only thing they could do."
"I meant-"
"Money wasn't all that much compared to what they could've coughed up, but still a fair size. One of the largest corporate payouts ever given."
"But the grief-"
"And not only that," Brater continued, "But they offered me any kind of perks I could want, including rides back and forth, new and experimental equipment, anything I asked."
Tim raised his hands, palms out. "All right. All right. I'll choose my words carefully."
Brater grunted a reply, then looked down at the floor.
At first Tim thought the man was subtly hinting at the end of conversation, but then he saw his eyes follow some movement, and followed his gaze.
On the floor, floating around and over their feet, were cleaner bugs, tiny robotic beetles that swarmed over all public surfaces. Each beetle had feelers that allowed it to home in on dirt and various pieces of gunk. It would hover over the detritus and use a combination of fire and tiny pressure pumps to crack it into pieces, which it would ingest and use to fuel its process. The bugs were cheap, easily mass-produced, and accepted even by insectophobiacs as an inescapable part of station life.
Tim saw two dozen such bugs move around in Brownian motion, trawling over the dirt left by his shoes, and erasing it as one might erase pencil lines on paper. He moved his foot a little to let them at more of the dirt, but in doing so inadvertently stepped down on one of the beetles and crushed it.
"Damnit," Tim said.
Brater smiled, the first time Tim had seen him do so. The old man's entire face went all wrinkly with the expression, as if it had long grown used to emoting strong feelings.
"Figures," Tim said. Brater nodded.
Tim said, "Look ... I feel stupid now, having told you what I did. I know it's not the same, breaking up with a girlfriend as losing one's wife of many years."
And Brater said, "No, it's not. But it hurts you all the same. Don't ever compare your pain to that of others. It isn't made any less or any greater by comparison to theirs, and in its proper context it's just as bad for you irrespective of what others may be going through." He looked out the window. "And the sea washes all things away, in the end."
Tim said, "You were a captain. You still are?"
"Nah. The money from the settlement was enough to retire. I still love the sea. I just can't stand to sail on it, at least not on the same ocean that-... well, yeah."
"So what're you doing here, away from the sea?" Tim asked.
"Oh, it's here," Brater said. "Trust me. You just don't see it."
Tim looked at the old man, and the old man looked right back at him. The ocular implant on Brater's face came into terrible focus.
"New and experimental equipment," Tim said in a dead voice. "Including modified implants."
"There are waves everywhere," Brater said, quite calmly.
"But you might have gone blind, or mad! Unlicensed modifications are incredibly dangerous! How could you?"
"How could I not? Aren't we both sailing into oblivion?" Brater waved his arm expansively, his sweep arcing from the beetles on the ground, to the drones in the air, and the ships floating around outside. "And we float on the waves. Everything we see, everything we know, it floats on invisible waves. We create these things to sail them, these things that allow us to navigate the dark seas of emotion, but they're only temporary; they sink, they cast us off. But the sea, and all that it is, the sea remains."
Tim, open-mouthed, could only shake his head.
Brater smiled again, and clapped him on the shoulder. "I don't expect you to understand. Not yet, at least."
"So here you sit, watching the invisible waves."
"That I do," Brater said.
"Do you pilot your own ships?"
"No, no, not anymore. And not in this place. I have enough money to buy me passage on convoys, and that is enough. I may imagine I'm piloting them, but no more than that."
"Convoys? But most of the ones here are going into insecure areas."
Brater nodded ."As am I."
"But that's incredibly dangerous! They get shot down all the time!"
The old sailor gave him a look that he would never forget. "Yes," he said. "They do."
They stared out at the stars, watching the invisible waves, until the roll call sounded, and each departed for his cruise.
It was a chilly day on the station, late in the evening. Fall was closing in, and while the station's atmospheric generators compensated for it to some small degree, the air was still kept cold and crisp. Wind machines kept currents running and made for buttoned-up coats, scarves and hats. People needed seasons, to mark the passage of time.
The young couple, Satyan and Treta, were walking hand in hand down the station's busiest shopping street, window-shopping for daydreams. Both of them had good jobs, he in health-goods marketing, spearheading the new transparent ad campaigns after the recent viral marketing fiasco, and she in accounting, where she specialized in passenger monitoring and toll calculations. Their wedding was still a few weeks away.
They stopped in front of a travel agency and looked at the ads, which were scrolling through on large flat screens set in the windows. Motion sensors registered their presence, and the scrollthrough automatically slowed. On one side of the screen was a narrow band that showed a spectrum of color from dark blue to dark red; the color represented the kind of excitement and adventure you wanted from your trip. Satyan waved a hand at the spectrum's red end, but Treta immediately waved hers a little further down.
"Killjoy," Satyan said.
"Nutcase," Treta replied, and kissed him.
The screen began flipping through images of various trips, on both space stations and planets. "The planetside ones are so expensive," Satyan said.
"And overblown, too," Treta said. "Look at this one. A safari on Luminaire?
Satyan glanced at it and smiled. "Actually, I went on those quite a bit when I was younger. Which planet is it?" He noticed Treta's expression. "Uh, I mean, who wants to spend their honeymoon surrounded by wild animals?"
Treta coughed.
"Apart from each other, I mean," Satyan said.
Treta grinned.
Satyan continued, "There's another one. It's ..." He peered at it. "Seriously? Stay in an old Amarrian palace for a week?"
"My kind of life. Can we even afford this, though?" Treta said.
"If we could, I wouldn't go anyway."
"So no partying and no frippery. Halfway between."
"Perfect," Satyan said and kissed her.
"I wonder what things will be like after that."
"Same as before," Satyan said. "Only better."
She smiled, then looked at a nearby store window and pointed. "Oh, look! They've got food mixers. This would be perfect for you when you're starting your day."
Satyan grunted something in reply.
"Oh, come on," she said, dragging him over to the window. "You've got no morning appetite and can't drink milk, and you know the doc said you have to eat breakfast. It's either this or gruel."
"Sweetie," Satyan said, "these things are so loud they could wake the dead."
"That's nice, dear. Look, they sell all sorts of different things! Alarm chronometers, more mixers, equilateral bread slicers, EMP cookers, washing microbots, oh, self-cleaning coffee brewers, ion stoves, holoviewers, stasis-cooled cheese plates, electric pillows... and look, they even expect wooden furniture."
"That's hideously expensive."
"It's antique style, too," Treta said.
"So will we be if we buy it. The debts'll age me prematurely."
"Now now," she said. "The-... what's that?"
Something small and mechanical buzzed passed them, followed by a little human tornado that bumped into Treta on its way past. Satyan reached down and grabbed hold of the kid's shirt. "Hey, hey, hey! Where you running to, little man?"
The kid gave him a startled look, then smiled from ear to ear. "That's my drone," he said and pointed at the mechanical thing. It was indeed a small toy drone, and was currently encircling a trashcan nearby.
"What's your name?" Satyan said.
"Dappy."
"Well, Dappy, you should know it's not polite to run into people. What do we say if we do that?"
"Sorry," Dappy said and grinned.
"Not to me, silly," Satyan said, but couldn't help grinning back. "The lady here."
Dappy turned to her and said, "Sorry, lady," still grinning.
Treta nodded at him, then looked at Satyan and silently mouthed Lady?
"Can you help me?" the kid said and pointed towards the drone, which was still flying around the trashcan. "I set it too fast."
Treta, aching a little from where the kid had bumped into her, whispered to Satyan, "I never even saw him coming."
Satyan whispered back, "Well, he's here now, I suppose," and set about trying to catch the boy's toy drone. The machine eluded his first couple of tries, but he eventually got a hold of it, tuned its speed down and handed it back to the kid, saying, "Here. And don't run so much. Relax. Enjoy life."
"Thanks," the kid said, and immediately ran off.
Satyan shook his head. From here he stood he happened to glance at a nearby window, one that Treta couldn't see yet, and noticed a store that was selling cell phones. Each 'cell' was in fact a station, and phone prices were effectively determined by whether your phone would work only within the solar system, or could be used to contact people in other systems as well. Intra-system talk would have crisp, clear communication, but as soon as you left the solar system, all talk got laggy, distorted and muddled, not to mention far more expensive. Once you were out of the region, that was it; silence fell. Only the capsuleers had access to better technology.
"Might need something like that," Satyan said.
Treta walked over to him, looked in the window, then shook her head. "My turn now. It's too expensive."
"Come on. What if I get posted off-station?"
"Then you can send me recordings. Or use the combooths like everyone else."
"Still-"
Treta turned on him. "It's too damn expensive, Satyan. If we don't have enough money for the furniture and things, we don't have it for this, either."
"Hey, come on."
"No, you come on. I'm tired of you scuttling anything that I want to get, then not applying the same standards to yourself." She threw up her arms. "But hey, what do I know? Maybe it'd be good to have a cell, so's I can keep an eye on you when you're away."
"Oh, right," Satyan said. "Because I can't be trusted. I'd jump into bed with the next woman I saw."
"Well, what do I know? For all I know you could be doing it with Sari right now."
"Hah," Satyan said. "Not in a million years."
"Hey! That's my best friend you're talking about."
Satyan put his arms around Treta and kissed her on the forehead. "I'm sorry, baby. I would definitely sleep with Sari if you weren't around. Feel better now?"
She plonked him on the nose, then kissed it. "Silly man." Then she broke free of his grip and walked on, oblivious of the future.
Satyan remained, staring at the cell phones in the windows, not seeing them. Then he followed, grasped for Treta's hand and took firm hold of it, and they continued on.
***
This time it was Treta's attention that was caught by something, across the street. She crossed it, and Satyan followed.
"Look," she said, pointing to a window. It was a baby clothing store. Satyan's eyes widened and he took an exaggerated step backwards, his hands in front of him like he were being held up at gunpoint.
Treta laughed. "Get over here," she said, and looked in the window. The display included everything from jumpsuits to shoes. The latter were at a discount, a sign said, because of a manufacturing error.
Satyan, who felt uncomfortable even looking at the things, decided to at least take part in the conversation. "Well, they're cheap."
"Mmm. I don't like them too much," Treta said. "They might fall apart at least notice." She looked closer. "It almost looks like they've been worn before."
"Sweetie, they're baby shoes, for sale," Satyan said, "and were probably never worn."
She shivered, and moved on.
As Satyan followed, he noticed that the air had in fact gotten even colder. It would probably be time to head home soon. He found a street vendor nearby, selling food and hot drinks, and led Treta there. The greasy smell of fried fat didn't much raise their appetites, so they bought hot drinks instead; Satyan a warm soup, Treta a frothy brew. For no real reason, Satyan reached out with his free hand and put it around Treta's waist, hugging her tight. Treta returned the gesture. Behind them, the baby shoes stood still on the shelves, unmoved.
After they were done, they tossed the plastic cups into the recycle bin next to the vendor's cart, and walked on. The next store was an insurance booth, and Satyan made a crack about having one right next to a fast food vendor.
Treta thought it over while looking at the premiums they offered, then said, "Well ... I'm not sure I want to say that something like this is too expensive. But still..."
"Yeah," Satyan said. "I know what you mean." And they put it out of their minds, like a blackened match tossed into a dark corner.
After they'd walked apace, Satyan added, "Actually, the furniture might not be a bad idea."
Treta stared at him. "Are you serious?"
"And some curtains." He saw her look. "Well, why not? If we plan to make a home, why not make a home? I don't mind the idea of coming back home to a warm place, familiar smells, lights on and a fireplace on the screen. And you."
She grasped his hand a little harder.
"The world doesn't always have to spin around," he said.
"No, it doesn't. Nor we with it," she said.
They came to a park, and saw the wind blow through the trees. The leaves were falling off in droves, leaving the branches bare and alone. The trees stood there like sentinels; from the viewpoint of the leaves, and the seeds nesting in the ground, they'd undoubtedly always been there, and would always be.
They walked on until they came to another travel agency, and on unspoken agreement they both slowed the walk. Satyan idly waved his hand in front of the sensors, close to the low, blue end. Now, with the nippy winds of fall blowing down every crack and crevice, and the trees shorn of their leaves and seeds, a sedate, relaxed vacation on some warm planet didn't seem half so bad.
They looked at each other, turned and went into the park. Night was falling, and it was time to head home. Hand in hand, they walked down the final trails together. The leaves obscured their path until at last they were gone.
Bethora looked out the station window, waiting for the race to begin. The windows here in the royal quarters were quite expansive, far more so than in most other sections of the station, and gave a good view of both the planet below and of the stars in the distance. The glass in the windows was warm, too, which was rare on space stations. Microscopic filaments embedded in the glass generated a constant supply of heat, and the material in the windows was specially mixed to conduct it well. The heat loss through this process was horrendous, and so it was only offered to the richest of clients.
The comfort wasn't solely for the benefit of visiting royalty. As part of the Ardishapur family, Bethora frequently had to play host to a number of tradesmen, merchants and religious officials, most of whom regularly visited the space station but wouldn't go to the planet's surface. Travels between planet and station were expensive if you wanted any degree of comfort, and while the royal court could get the most comfortable seats free of charge, anyone else would either have to pay, or accept being stowed away like so much cargo and livestock.
So Bethora went up to the sky on a regular basis. She enjoyed it. Things were simpler here, she found, and offered opportunity for reflection and quiet. This time around, the retinue even included her son, who was about to compete in the space races.
She turned from the window and looked to the royal banners hanging from the walls, decorated with the Amarrian crest and the various sigils of her family. The banners swayed a little, gently wafted by air conditioners discreetly planted in the walls behind them. Beneath the banners stood the royal furniture, old and splendid: chairs of thick, dark oak, covered in embroidered pillows; various old paper books on shelves, chronicling the family history; gold and silver cutlery and dishware.
The last was being polished by Javies, Bethora's manservant, who mumbled genteel obscenities about the state of the place and the competence of the staff. Javies was part of Bethora's retinue, and went with her on all official trips. They routinely visited the space station, and every time, he expressed his astonishment at the lackadaisical attitude the staff onboard seemed to have towards basic cleanliness. The silverware, he maintained, looked like it had been stored in a coalmine, and the less said about the dust on the tables, the better.
Bethora, who was in most other respects a strict and proper person, didn't begrudge Javies his little complaints. The man had been in service to her family for a long time, and had assisted willingly in various tasks that younger men would have begged leave from. He knew when it was all right to talk, and when one should remain silent.
Bethora looked back out the window, staring at the planet. She heard Javies's footsteps approach.
"Brings us closer to the Lord, milady?" he asked.
"Brings me further from the earth, Javies."
"As milady says."
"I do wish they'd get this thing over and done with."
Javies handed her a thin porcelain cup, and poured tea into it. "Milady has never been much in favour of the races, as I recall. Incidentally, I took the liberty of cleaning the tea kettle. Three times, in fact. I believe it had gathered enough carbon to form the basis of intelligent life."
She glanced at him and smiled briefly. "Thank you, Javies. It's always good to have a diversion."
"Indeed, milady." Javies retreated to the dinner table, where he began to polish the gold decoration on the glass cups.
"I just don't like Keral taking time away from his studies," Bethora said. "He needs to work hard."
"The children of men can never rest, it seems, milady," Javies said, alluding gently to the status of Keral's father. The man had been a notoriously hard worker, right until his untimely death. Afterwards, Bethora had grown increasingly dissatisfied with Keral's progress, constantly egging and pushing him to greater heights.
"It's for his own good," Bethora said. "Life isn't easy."
Javies, who had been a manservant for a long time and knew a few things about the difference between royal and civilian life, said nothing.
"Besides, if his father were here, he'd push the boy far harder."
"I'm sure he would, milady."
There was a knock. Javies walked over to the door and greeted the guest, saying to Bethora, "Lady Raana here to see you, milady."
The woman walked in. She wore a dress of shimmering greens, and a golden necklace, both of which glimmered in the lights of the quarter. She walked speedily over to Bethora, gave her a nervous smile and said, "Bater sends his regards."
Bethora nodded. Bater was Raana's husband, a man with sad eyes and clammy hands. Bethora had let him on top of her once, in a weak moment, and had told him afterwards that if anyone ever found out, she would have him castrated.
"Have you heard from Keral?" Raana added.
"Only that he was getting ready, and expected to win. How about Selan?" Selan was Raana's son, and would be aboard the same ship as Keral in the race, acting as Keral's second-in-command.
"The same. I do wish those boys weren't so eager. Competitiveness is all well and good, but one day they're going to take it too far."
"Rather that than not far enough," Bethora said.
"Oh, don't say that. I'm worried enough as it is without having them be jinxed."
Javies interrupted. "I'm sorry, but could I offer miladies some tea?"
"No, thank you, dear," Raana responded. "I only popped round to wish everyone good luck."
"And the same to you," Bethora said. She put her arm around Raana's shoulders. "They're going to be fine. Stop worrying. I didn't raise Keral to let me down."
Raana looked at her. "I know you didn't, darling," she said. "I know you didn't. At any rate, I'll be off. The race should be starting soon, anyway." And with that, she took her leave.
***
Several ships undocked. Each was a different model, but shared the Amarrian characteristics: The lambent gleam on golden hulls, the hawk-like curves, the quiet, majestic grandeur. They lined up in a predetermined pocket of space and signed their readiness in the local communications channel. A few moments later, the judges gave the starting call. The race was on.
The rules were fairly simple. Each contestant had to destroy a series of beacons. Each beacon, when destroyed, would drop a marker that needed to be returned to station. Points of varying measure were scored by destroying your beacon, returning your markers, destroying other people's beacons, destroying or returning their markers, and performing any particular manoeuvres considered elegant, flashy or dangerous enough. All beacons were fairly closely spaced, so there was always a risk that your opponent might shoot down yours instead of going for his own. As a result, ships needed to be fitted not only with sufficient firepower to destroy the beacons, but also electronic warfare capabilities to disrupt the targeting capabilities of other players. Not only that, but since each marker was fairly sizeable, you'd need to fit cargohold expanders on your ship if you wanted to haul more than a couple back to station at any one time; and expanders would slow your ship down noticeably. Ship setups were kept strictly secret, shown only to professional inspectors.
Keral was already in the lead. He'd spent months practicing with Selan at his side, and the two commanded their ship with admirable precision. Since the purpose of competition was to test the young men's mastery of command, the ships were staffed only by regular crews, not by capsuleer pilots.
Eventually, it came down to a single beacon. Keral and Selan's ship, the Apollyon, was just barely ahead, racing toe to toe with another ship. The Apollyon started going faster, and faster, and faster still, firing on the beacon and hitting with incredible accuracy at that range. It managed to destroy the beacon, but for some reason its guns kept firing, into empty space, and a commentator noted that if they kept that up something was sure to burn out. The Apollyon rushed onward to pick up the marker, but when it got in range, it didn't slow; instead, it kept going, overshooting its prize. It tried to turn, but inertia had it in an inexorable grip, and as the spectators watched in shock, it crashed into a nearby asteroid.
***
They were at the station's medical quarters. Bethora sat by her son's side, in silence. He was being kept unconscious. His friend Selan had died earlier the same night.
The head doctor approached her. "The scan results are in, milady. I'm very sorry to tell you this, but with the internal injuries your son has sustained, it's almost certain that he won't last the night."
She glared at him.
He continued. "We'll do everything we can to make your stay here as comfortable as possible-"
"There is something else you can do," she said. "You can help my son."
"I'm sorry," the doctor said, "I truly am. I can understand your reaction, but short of giving him a new body, we're helpless. I strongly suggest you focus instead on the little time you have left with your son."
Without breaking her gaze, Bethora got up and stood very close to the doctor. "You are not listening to me," she said in a quiet tone. "Or yourself. There is something you can do. A new body."
The doctor stared at her. Then he bubbled, "That's, no, that's unheard of. Amarr royal skin is absolutely sacred."
"Is yours?" Bethora said.
The doctor fell silent.
"If my son dies tonight," she said, "he will not be the only one. Nor will I stop there. Is that clear?"
The doctor swallowed, and nodded.
"I know there are several facilities in the area with clones on standby. My manservant will assist you in making the necessary arrangements, including all steps needed for secrecy. My son will awake tomorrow, and make a miraculous recovery."
***
Bethora looked through the shatterproof window set in the door. It was a week after the accident.
On the other side, Keral paced, tossing things back and forth, screaming nonsensical dialogue from movies he'd once seen, stopping every now and then to turn the lights in the room off and back on. He had indeed made a miraculous recovery, but not a complete one. Brain damage, irreparable, had ensued.
Her advisors had informed Bethora she would have to keep her son out of sight for a while. Later, they would let rumours slip out that the crash, combined with Bethora's harsh, cold treatment of her son throughout his childhood, had resulted in such psychological trauma that Keral might never recover. No one could ever find out that the cloning of sacred Amarrian skin had taken place, nor that, with security procedures circumvented, it had gone so disastrously wrong.
Bethora placed her fingers against the glass. Her son, lost in whirlwinds, didn't even notice.
"You," someone said.
Bethora turned. In front of her stood Raana, accompanied by two armed guards.
"What's this?" Bethora said.
"Why did the ship go faster than its fittings should've allowed?" Raana said in a dead tone. "Why did its guns keep on firing at nothing? Why didn't its shields buffer it from the asteroid? Why did my son die?"
Bethora rubbed her eyes. "I don't know. Why don't you go ahead and tell me, Raana?"
"I had the wreckage investigated," Raana said. "Turns out it contained ship rig prototypes. Since rigs are so new on the market, they haven't yet been allowed in competition, but your son didn't care about that, did he?"
"What are you saying?" Bethora said.
"The first prototypes for these things wouldn't have shown up on the ship fitting screens, and so the inspector would never know. But they were completely unstable and were never released to the public. The only people who could've gotten their hands on those infernal machines were those with special access. People like us.
"Your boy had this planned for ages. He cheated, and it killed my son, and it was all because of you."
"Me?!"
"Who pushed him into this? Who never let up? Who made him feel he was never good enough for anything?" Raana said. "I don't know if you actively encouraged him to cheat, but it really doesn't matter. You're responsible for all of this, Bethora, and I intend to see you pay."
She raised a hand, and the guards stepped forward.
Bethora steeled herself. "You don't know what you're doing," she said.
Raana's eyes went wide and her face turned pale with rage. "And you do?" she said. She stalked over to Bethora and jabbed a finger at the window on the door beside them. "Look! Look at what you've done! You wouldn't even let that poor boy rest in death."
"What do you mean?" Bethora managed to say.
"You know exactly what I mean. It doesn't take a genius to figure out," Raana said, then shook her head. "My god, you're pathetic."
Bethora opened her mouth to say something, thought the better of it, and walked past Raana, the guards following her with hands on their weapons.
On the other side of the door, the boy turned the lights on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off, on and off.
The Amarrian order that calls itself the Speakers of Truth harks back to the Time of Contemplation.
It was a quiet period in Amarrian history. The Holders had gained power but had yet to start their expansionist Reclaiming in earnest; instead, they were focused on solidifying their powerbase. The appearance of the first Emperors was a big help in that respect, since it gave the Holders the opportunity to rule the masses by proxy and not have to risk their own necks in the process.
However, the Holders decided that a trap door was needed, an emergency option for them to wield executive power should the Emperor grow too powerful too quickly. To maintain the appearance of neutrality, they set up this power through a separate institution known as the Speakers of Truth. This institution was a religious order staffed with hand-picked theologians that were known not only to be favourable to the people's cause rather than to the Emperor and the royal family, but also to be thoughtful, kind, intelligent individuals who had more interest in improving the lives of their fellow men rather than engage in the dirty games of politics. In short, the kind of people who wouldn't be any trouble.
The order wasn't publicized in any manner, and was buried beneath rules, regulations and religious red tape so as to hide its true nature from the Emperor and his cohorts. Its only distinguishable purpose was to act as intermediaries in religious disputes should the need arise - in which capacity their word would be equal to that of even the Emperor himself - and to recoup its operational costs by operating as an educational establishment for selected Holder students. The latter aspect was intended so that the Speakers of Truth would not appear to be overtly political, and thus would not attract undue attention. The Holders then intended for the Speakers of Truth to be brought out in circumstances where they needed to counteract or even veto a decision made by the ruling Emperor. As it turns out, these circumstances never arose, and the order was eventually forgotten by most of the ruling body.
***
The order took on its own quiet life, and ticked along in peace. They were situated in a remote location, the better to avoid getting involved in politics, and for the most part could operate without interference. Aside from their hidden purpose of judgment, the Speakers of Truth offered the usual aspects of religious life: They studied natural science, led a self-sustaining life, and even offered temporary sanctuary to refugees and those in need.
In fact, the order's controlling body quickly realized that the best way to ensure the order's survival would not be to try and eliminate the political trap doors the Holders had built for it - the moment they'd start making waves, the order would immediately be dissolved - but to use their talents to insert itself in Holder society, digging in to such an extent that it would be unthinkable to remove them. Therefore, the Speakers of Truth concentrated on building a reputation as an outstanding educational establishment, offering both a private curriculum for select children of Holders and a free education program for those children of Commoners who showed promise. The Holder program gained them obvious popularity with the ruling classes, and eventually led to strong backing by those who had graduated from the Speakers' schools and risen to high public office. The Commoner program, meanwhile, had a strong focus on religious studies, making it all the more popular among the lower orders within the Holders, who embraced any societal function that served to keep the Commoners obeyant and faithful.
The tactic worked. By the time of the Moral Reform, the order was regarded as a minor building block in Amarrian high society: a respected and respectable institution that exuded a mix of piety and academia. In addition, they were seen as strictly apolitical, to the point where they were sometimes even asked to perform their original arbitrative duty, albeit in a far lesser capacity than intended. Ordained members of the Speakers of Truth have divine permission to act as arbitrators in disputes both religious and secular. While they have free rein to dispense whatever judgment they see fit, the bulk of laws which surround their order sometimes makes this a little difficult. As a result, their authority tends to be accepted by the involved parties as an item of faith rather than on a strictly legal basis. The order was subsumed into the Theology Council during the latter's rise to position as main authority on religious trials and punishment, but due to the Speakers' educational focus, they've managed to continue operating as a separate unit, and the Theology Council rarely calls upon them to perform duties of the court.
Of course, given that the Speakers of Truth are sometimes asked to rule in matters involving high-ranking Holders, their power does rankle some of the Amarr elite. The Privy council, composed of the five royal Heirs, has always treated the Speakers of Truth as a minor thorn in both their sides, but have never found enough reason to act against the order. There exists a sort of unspoken agreement where the Speakers don't interfere with matters that might have a political bent, and in turn are allowed to keep their arbitrator powers unchallenged. Of course, there may crop up exceptional cases in which the Theology and Privy councils will actually endorse the Speakers' involvement in a political matter. One suspects that those cases will not bode well for the defendant. Not well at all.
He lies in the middle of a golden field. The sun, not yet high, gently warms him. The field has grown and not been harvested, so from where he's lying it looks like the long stalks of wheat are reaching for the skies.
He lifts one hand and reaches, too. Then he lowers it. All the while, he keeps his vision focused on the sky, on the distance.
Not once did he cry out in pain. All that was done, really, took place while he was asleep, or just somewhere else. And there was no speaking to others; it is Not Done to share these things.
Sometimes he fingers the scar behind his ear, where they went in.
***
It is a fact of nature that the things that grab our attention, the ones to which we react the strongest, are the things that shock us. Something comes at you slowly and deliberately, and you have time to think. Something jumps at you, and you don't. You can't put any of your filters in place; you just react instinctively. If the threat disappears as quickly as it appeared, though, all that instant mania was for nothing.
It is also a fact that high level organisms, having developed the capacity for abstract thought and imagination, can be made to feel threatened in a far greater variety of ways than the simple things that merely crawl around in the grass.
***
It is a symptom of madness that thoughts become uncontrollably disjointed. This can be encouraged.
***
He can't quite remember how he got here. There was ... a long walk, he's sure, but he remembers it as rather comfortable and not really the sort of thing you'd associate with extended rambling through the grass and the fields. Perhaps he merely dreamt it and is now waiting to wake up.
A long wheat stalk, too heavy in the head to rise alone and so relying on the support of its brethren, has bent down into the void created by his body. He strokes it, then grasps it tightly between thumb and forefinger and breaks it, sticking it into his mouth and chewing languidly. There's no hurry. There was never any hurry.
Months ago, he stole some things. It was an impulse decision, quite unlike him, and didn't seem like much at the time. Just some documents he found while working late one night, documents he grabbed and stuffed in his jacket. What he was going to do with them, he can't remember. Probably nothing; stolen on a vague notion, the idea of gain, rather than for any concrete use. His ideas veered from blackmail to selling to simply putting the documents back.
When they came for him, he was still trying to decide. That's what hurt all the way through: He hadn't even done anything yet! He had taken the documents and he was sorry, but he wasn't a bad man. He wasn't a traitor.
They didn't believe him.
***
It is a symptom of madness that thoughts become uncontrollably disjointed. This can be encouraged.
***
There were needles and sharp, glinting things, but there was very little actual pain. Everyone wore white and had theatre masks that showed expressionless ivory faces. He was made to sleep, often. They asked him the same questions again and again.
It was a short while later that the visions started. He would be lying there, strapped in, while a doctor - he preferred to think of them as "doctors" - slowly turned a dial back and forth. The dial had no numbers, only a line of varying width that snaked around its circumference. The doctor would stand beside the dial, so he could see how it was being turned.
They asked him the same questions again and again. When his answers displeased them, the dial would be turned.
***
At a low level nothing much happens. He will sometimes speak to a doctor whose mask is not, in fact, a mask, but his real face. The ivory lips move, and the ivory voice speaks directly into his head. That doctor only appears when the dial is turned.
At a medium level he sees little things with many legs, crawling towards him.
At a high level there are no shapes, no distinct colors nor forms. He loses the ability to discern any concrete entities. His mind becomes a kaleidoscope turning at uncontrollable speeds.
***
They'd ask him questions again and again, until he was sure he'd gone utterly mad.
***
A butterfly lands on a nearby stalk. He wonders why it drifted in. There are no flowers here.
The butterfly is quick, but his hand is quicker. He crushes it, lets it fall to the ground beside him. He smiles. He envies it, and wipes his hand on his face, imagining that its blood is his and that he's dying too.
***
A group of people came to see him once. They all had the same masks as the doctors, but their builds showed that they were younger than the regular staff. A doctor put his hand on the dial, which was turned off, but did nothing with it. The doctor then turned to the group and this is what he said:
It is a symptom of madness that thoughts become uncontrollably disjointed. This can be encouraged.
Then the doctor started turning the dial.
***
After some time they set him free. Free to wander around, dazed. No one knew what he had done, but at the same time everyone knew that it had been dishonorable. He couldn't get a new job, of course. Not even the lowliest street sweepers would talk to a dishonored man. His family deserted him. His friends never answered. Even complete strangers, passing him in the street, gave him looks, as if they could smell his rank.
His savings had been left intact, but he never had to dip into them, because he'd been given a monthly pension. That, somehow, made it even worse.
In some of his more lucid moments, he reflected that what was being done to him wasn't because he had committed a serious crime, not really. It was because he had committed one that was not serious, that had not been the result of a planned, thought-out criminal action, that had just tempted an everyday corporate man. And they couldn't have that. So he was being made an example of.
They had put something behind his eyes. That was the only way to explain it. It was like the advertisement techniques he'd heard of, where an image was flashed so quickly that you didn't consciously register it. Quafe was rumored to have used this as part of their early aggressive marketing campaigns.
It was quite simple, really, the way it worked. Sometimes when he blinked, an image was put on his optic nerve. Not every time, and sometimes not for hours, and even when it had started it was irregular. There was really no way for him to know when it would happen.
The image was of a crime scene. Or an accident, though he couldn't imagine what kind of mishap could cause this kind of mutilation. He never got to see it clearly, because the image wasn't projected if he kept his eyes closed. He suspected that some mechanism inside him detected when it was a real blink and sent the image at just the right time.
There really was a lot of blood. And other things.
The first time it happened, he dropped the bag of takeaway food he was holding. He blinked a few times, shook his head, then bent to pick up the bag. It happened again just as he'd grabbed hold, and he fell to his knees in shock and fright.
It caught him off guard every time. Every single time.
The scene was usually the same, though the particulars changed. Sometimes he was sure there was something in the middle of the carnage, something with a large, dark mouth and several rows of teeth. Other times there were light, nearly white patches on the fringes, and he wondered whether he might be looking at an image of the doctors and some very unfortunate patient.
***
One day, inside a grocery store, he came upon a man he'd once known. A respected man, known for some peculiarities but well-liked all the same. The man ignored him, of course. He would have passed on, lost in his own thoughts, if he hadn't caught the sporadic trembling in the man's hands. He stopped, pretended to busy himself with some discounted wares, and shot glimpses at his old friend. He noticed that occasionally, when the man blinked, it was as if a slight tremor passed through his body.
He stood there in wonder, trying to decide whether he had really seen this and how he could possibly know for certain - since people wouldn't even speak to him - until he realized that maybe this once he could use his ostracization to his advantage. He walked up to his friend, said, "Excuse me, won't be a minute," and, with two fingers, quickly parted the hair just behind his ear.
There was a scar.
The man froze, and stared straight ahead, as if he'd heard the sounds of a monster behind him and was determined not to look back and see.
***
That night he'd cried even more than usual. Not only for the fate of his friend, but for his own inadequacy and shame in not having overcome the same handicap.
***
It is a symptom of madness that thoughts become uncontrollably disjointed. This can be encouraged.
Dementia is another symptom. When the ability for coherent reason has failed this grossly, the reality one has created through one's senses and mind may become detached from objective view.
***
He lifts one hand and reaches. Then he lowers it. All the while, he keeps his vision focused on the sky, on the distance.
***
It is a symptom of madness that thoughts become uncontrollably disjointed. This can be encouraged.
It had been raining for a while. The weather in this hemisphere of the planet was usually pretty rough. It was now night-time, and most everyone had retired to their warm, safe beds. Outside, steam rose from grids in the gutters, and the rain pitter-patted on stone.
From somewhere came the round of rapid, splashing footsteps.
***
Sebastian ran and ran. His lungs burned, every drawn breath feeling like fire coursing down his throat. His head throbbed, his sight was going increasingly blurry and his legs felt numb from exhaustion and cold, and still he ran. He entered an alley and sprinted through, turned again, another alley, sprint and turn, taking a zigzag path without looking back.
At last he came to a stop, at the end of a cul-de-sac with a wooden fence. He leaned against the fence, hands above his head, gasping for air. The rain pounded him mercilessly.
There was no warning, no telltale sound of their arrival. He just felt a sting on his back, and a sudden onset of vertigo.
He sank to his knees, and the world turned dark.
***
The first thing he noticed was the smell. There was sweat, and filth, and a cloying sweetness. But there was also the faint sense of something stronger, something that cut right through all the other scents. It reminded him of visits to the hospital; it was the smell of a dead cleanliness.
He was sitting in a chair. His hands were tied behind his back, his feet to the chair legs. His head felt clamped in place, and couldn't move. His vision was still blurry, and the light seemed dim, but he thought he heard the sound of someone else sitting in the room.
"Hello?" he ventured.
There was no reply.
"Look, if this is about that bag of Crash-"
"It isn't," a voice said. It was a man's voice, deep, with a rather drawn-out accent. The words came out as Eet Eesn't.
"He thinks it's the Craaash. He don't know what he's doing here," said another voice, higher-pitched.
"He'll find out," said a third. This one raised the hairs on the back of Sebastian's neck. It was a very calm voice.
He heard someone stand up. A gust of sweat wafted over him, and he tried not to be sick. A faint shape kneeled in front of him, and he heard two pistolcracks from the man's knees. A hand was laid on his shoulder.
"You've done a lot of things, my friend, my brilliant friend," said the voice that had spoken first. "A lot of things." He sighed. "There are people who really ... who're unhappy with you. You know? There are people you've really let down."
Sebastian's eyes were starting to focus. The man in front of him was short and stocky, with muscles that had started running to fat. His haircut, beard and clothes were all of trim cut, but dirty and grimy. His eyes looked tired.
There was a table in the room, with two men sitting by it. One looked like a live wire. He was skinny, and wore tattered shoes and pants, and an unbuttoned shirt revealing a rib cage that looked like a toaster rack. His short hair stood up on end. His eyes were wide and unblinking, and he was grinning so much that Sebastian could see the top of his gums.
The other man at the table was neat and prim. He sat perfectly straight in his chair, yet seemed quite relaxed and at ease. All his movements were gentle but precise. In his right hand he was rolling around some small, elongated metal object. Sebastian started thinking of him as the Calm man, in direct contrast to the other one, who just looked stone cold Crazy.
The third man, squatting in front of him, seemed the most human. Sebastian couldn't think of any C-word for him, so he just named him Carlos.
In his deep voice, Carlos said, "We are going to spend a while here." He rose to his feet. "And we're going to see if we can't figure out what to do with you. I want you to tell us how you can be of use, my friend. Let's see if your brilliance helps you answer." He walked over to the table, pulled up a chair and sat down.
Crazy got up, holding something. "It's gonna be so much fun now," he said. "Know what this is? It's usually called a nutcracker, but we won't get into that quite yet. I just call it the alligator. It hurts. Oh god, how it can hurt. Here, let me show you." He grabbed Seb's little finger and held it taut, putting the alligator around it. Seb tried vainly to pull it out. "I know, I know," Crazy said, grinning. "If it's any help, this won't hurt nearly as much as what we're going to do to you later on." He clamped down hard. There was a loud crack from the alligator, and over the screams from Seb, Crazy yelled, "You know how many bones there are in just one hand? More than you can imagine! And we're going to find them all!"
***
After a few more bones had been broken, one of them having torn through the skin of Seb's finger and now sticking out like a splinter, Calm put a hand on Crazy's shoulder, indicating silence. Calm then leaned over Seb and said, "You know, this can all stop, right now. My friend mentioned it earlier on. What we're doing to you can take an end."
"How?!" Seb said, crying and retching. "I'll do anything! I'll steal for you, I'll kill for you, I'll do anything you ask! Please, tell me what to do and I'll do it."
Calm looked at him, disgusted. "I want to show you something," he said. "Can you focus? Can you see?"
Seb nodded.
"We'll see. Okay, let's bring it in." There was a rattling. Raising his heavy head, Seb saw Carlos wheel in a trolley loaded with items, but he couldn't yet make out what they were.
The trolley was rolled in front of him, and Calm picked up a thin metal rod from it. "This thing here is used for puncturing," Calm said. "I'll use it to point out the other things, because some of them I really shouldn't touch without gloves. Those jars on the lower shelf of the trolley hold various acids. The one with the greenish tint is for skin, and the yellow one is for open wounds. You cannot imagine how much they burn.
"Now, that solid-looking black box beside them, the one with the wires coming out, that's a small generator. The wires will go into various places. And the large plastic box beside that, the semitransparent one, that's the one holding the syringes and the hypodermic needles. Most of them are used and pretty crusty, but we don't mind."
He pointed to the trolley's top shelf. "Basics here. You'll notice the various scalpels. This small one is my favorite, see here." The rod pointed at a tiny knife whose blade was practically nonexistent; it was more of a nib. "Sometimes, our visitors start closing their eyes, in some desperate attempt to ignore what we're doing to them. So, instead of prying them open, with clamps and rods and screws and that sort of stuff, we just remove the eyelids. Simple, effective, saves us a whole lot of trouble.
"Beside those scalpels there are the usual knives, of course, and various sharp objects. You'll notice a progression, from the sharp, scientific things here," he indicated one side of the trolley, then pointed the metal rod to the other side, "down through the lesser tools, ending in this sorry collection of blunt instruments here, though even they can be of use. Take these, for example."
He put down the rod and hefted two bulky-looking iron objects, one like the end of a spear, the other similar but with a large metal block affixed to one end. "This is called a hammer and a chisel. They're heavy, which is good, because they need to be applied with some force. The chisel is placed against your joint like so," he leaned over to Seb and pointed the chisel at the inside of his elbow, then gently put the hammer against the chisel's head with a faint tink, "and the hammer swings with full force like so, driving it into your joint. It's quite marvelous, really."
He put the items back on the trolley and picked up something else. "And these are called pliers. You'll note, though, that the clamping ends have been bent somewhat out of shape. This is on purpose. See the little spike at the end there? That's for your tongue.
"You can still stop it, though," he added. "We just need an answer to the question."
"What question?" said Seb, trying to stop crying. "Anything."
"How can we use you? That's all; that's the question. How can you be of use?"
"I ... " Seb began. The three stood before him, completely silent. "I don't know."
Calm sighed. "Then it's all over for you, I fear. Shall we begin proper?"
He went to the table and got the small metal object he'd been rolling around earlier, then walked back to Sebastian, casually letting the item dangle from his hand. With a rising horror Sebastian realized that it was a long iron nail, with dark flecks on its point. "What do you want?" Sebastian said. "Please, just say what you want. I'll tell you anything, I'll get it for you if there's something you want."
"My friends and I already asked you," Calm said, "and you didn't even deign to respond. If we can't find a use for you, we can't do much.
"As for me, now ... this," he said, rolling the nail back and forth in his hand, "this here is just to start you off. There'll be a lot more before we're through, and you'll probably find that you won't have a single part of your body left unviolated. But this rusty, dull, long nail," he raised it up to Sebastian's face, "this is going into your eye." And the last thing Sebastian's right eye saw, while he screamed and screamed, was the nail slowly being pushed further in.
***
They'd left it in there, sticking out like a peg. The jelly had oozed out around it, so Calm had dabbed it up with a handkerchief. "Don't want the nail to start slipping out, do we now?" he'd said. "Incidentally, this is why we decided to clamp your head. Personally, I like people to be able to swing their head around, show a little life, but you might manage to ... haha ... hit the nail hard enough on the head to drive it into your brain. And we really can't have that."
***
"Aaaaaagh! It huuuuuurrrts! Get them off me! Get them off, get them off, get them off!"
"What can you do?" they yelled.
"I don't know what to do!"
"Not good enough," they roared, and kept going.
***
"Please, not the other hand too. I beg you, oh gods, please-"
"What is your use? What is your use, my brilliant friend?"
"It's - it's - it's - I don't know. I don't know! Whatever you want it to be! What do you want it to be?"
"That's not the answer. We'll start off with one finger-"
"Oh god, no! Please!"
***
"I think he's fallen unconscious."
"Not hardly. Look, he's still muttering something. Hand me the wires again, please. Thank you. Put it on three, no, let's give it a four. On my mark ... now!"
"AAAAAAGH!"
"There we go."
***
"Kill me, kill me, kill me, please, kill me-"
"Why? We're not half done yet."
"Kill me, kill me, kaaAAA-"
"See?"
***
"More acid, yes?"
Seb was not forming any intelligible words at this point, only sounds and burbled whimperings.
"More acid indeed."
***
When they were all done, and Carlos had started putting away his tools - not cleaning them, just putting them away, and the syringes and hypodermic needles went into the same box they came out of - what was left of Sebastian raised his head for the last time. His one good eye was having trouble focusing again, everything fading in and out of his vision. He'd see Carlos clearly, then just as a big pink blur, then clearly again.
"Why?" he said.
"What's that?" said Carlos, not looking, just putting away things.
It took Sebastian a full minute to form the words. "Why? What did you want?" he said at last. There were no tears, there was no grief. Nothing was left. "What did you want?"
Carlos put away the remains of his items in silence. Then he walked over to Sebastian and crouched in front of him. "You really don't know?" he said.
"No."
"Tomorrow, someone is going to find your corpse. In that alleyway where we caught you, looking all pretty like you do now. And word's going to spread. And we'll have a lot less trouble with the other thieves and druggies in the area. We'll be able to do our business without the annoyance of people like you."
"And the questions?" Sebastian said.
"Had no right answers," Carlos replied. "Here," he held up a syringe, "one last shot. This'll be quiet and calm." He leaned in and injected Sebastian with the contents. "Your vision will go, then your consciousness. I'll be back in a while to get your body."
"Thank you," Sebastian said.
"Don't mention it."
"Thank you," Sebastian said. "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." Then he fell silent.
Carlos waited a few moments, then checked Sebastian's pulse. "Return to brilliancy," he said, put away the final syringe, and left the room.
But when it was all over, when the blood had been mopped up and the devices cleaned and put back in their place, and what was left of the victim had been carted away, Song turned to his mentor and said, "I don't think I can do this."
Malachai, far older, looked at him and said nothing. They were sitting on a bench outside the wooden hut used for interrogations. The insides of the hut were padded with straw. On its outside hung various interrogation instruments.
"It's not ... it's not the blood. Or the pain. I don't mind that," Song said.
Malachai remained silent.
"I just don't think I can fulfil my duties as a senior Torturer, when the time comes." Song traced a line in the dirt. "I've spent a lot of time thinking about it, and I just haven't been able to come to terms with all of this. I can't stop feeling that what we're doing here is wrong on a fundamental level. It may be necessary, but I can't see my part in it."
Malachai reached up and picked from the wall of the hut a wooden instrument, shaped like a star with sharp points. "This is a tool," he said. "It was built for a purpose. It is silent and, if properly cared for, performs its function admirably." He sighed and put it back. "But we're more than dumb instruments of fate, and sometimes we forget that. I agree that what we do here may seem evil. It's certainly not something you'd expect of civilized people, and I'd hate for my adepts to take any more pleasure in their work than that of a demanding job cleanly done." He put a hand on Song's shoulder. "Everyone has to find their own way. No one should be forced to be just another tool on the wall."
"But it's not ... I mean, I want to help. I want to take part in the revolution," Song said. "And I've spent enough time as an adept to know I'm good at this. I don't make anyone suffer an instant longer than they have to. It’s something I really think I was made for, at least as far as talents go."
"But those talents aren't enough," Malachai said.
Song nodded glumly. "I feel shackled," he said. "I feel like what we do here has become a prison, and the weight of our actions has chained me down."
Malachai looked at him for a while, then got up. "Wait here," he said.
Song nodded again and laid his head against the wall of hut, letting the sun shine on his face. He heard Malachai's steps retreat, fall silent, then return.
"Here you go," Malachai said, handing him a small rucksack. "All you'll need for your trip."
"What? What's this? And what trip?" Song said.
"The one you need to take. Don't worry, we've got everything covered back here. I've been waiting for you to reach this stage, actually. The food in the bag is dry stuff, but it lasts and gives you energy. There's some bottles of water there, too - you'd do well to conserve those."
"Why? Where am I going?"
Malachai pointed. "See those mountains? Beyond them is the Sobaki desert. That's where you're going."
"What am I supposed to do there?" Song said.
"Talk to the spirits, and decide once and for all whether you want to be a Torturer. There is a small box in the bag, made of ivory and wrapped in velvet. Once you've crossed the mountains and reached the Sobaki sands, you'll see one oasis, and only one, on the edge of the horizon. Head there. It's only a few days' journey, and the food in this pack will get you there."
"What about the way back? What'll I eat?"
"Don't worry about it. The ivory box will take care of that. Go.. I will see you here again when you've figured out the nature of your chains, and are ready to give me an answer."
***
The mountains had not been as difficult to surmount as he'd expected, but the desert had dried him out. Song sat under a palm tree in the oasis and finished off a water bottle. There was a pond there with clear water, and some bushes in the shade that held a few berries.
He reached into his bag and brought out the velvet-wrapped box. The cloth glistened like oil in the sun. He unwrapped it and inspected the ivory beneath. It was intricately carved, displaying various figures from Minmatar fables and myths. On the top was the familiar sign of the Khumaak.
Song lifted the lid. Inside, in separate compartments, were three bits of a darkish root Song didn't recognize. He picked up the smallest one. It felt heavy but dry, had a faintly sweet scent, and all in all didn't much look like the sort of thing you'd want to base life-changing decisions on.
Song shrugged and popped it into his mouth. He lay down in the shadow of the palm tree, eyes closed.
Nothing happened.
Eventually, his stomach began to growl. He picked up the other two bits from the ivory box, ate them and lay back down. Clouds drifted overhead. A Yetamo lizard, sacred in the old myths, darted from out under a rock and stared at him, its tongue flicking at the air.
"Might be I'll end up eating you," Song said.
"Better not. I'm fairly poisonous," the lizard replied.
"Right." Song scratched his arm and yawned, then froze. "Did you-"
"Yes indeed," the lizard said. "Though right now that's the least of your worries. Feel a little cramp, do we?"
"You ... you ... what ... aaaaaagh!" Song grabbed his waist and keeled over, grimacing. He burped a few times, then lifted his head and vomited.
"Ugh," the lizard said. "Don't try to talk. You'll be that way for a while. I'll come back when you're done." It crawled back under the rock. Song gasped for air in between retches, and kept on spewing.
Finally, the cramps lessened. He was at the point of retching blood by then.
"Lizard, you there?" he said.
The lizard crawled out. "I'm here."
"Why is this happening?"
"Because you're not ready for what needs to be done. So we're going to help you."
Song wiped drool off his chin. "Some help," he said. "You… whatever you are. What made you think that tricking me into the desert to eat poison was going to change my mind about becoming a Torturer?"
The lizard regarded him with reptilian stoicism. Then it crawled closer and began to talk.
It told him of the manifest destiny of the Minmatar. Of the horrendous price they had already paid, and of what might lie ahead depending on what choices they made. It spoke of those choices at length, their benefits and their terrible costs. It compared the cost of individual liberty, happiness and life – a cost that could include hard choices made in blood – with the dangers of losing them all.
Gradually, Song fell very silent.
Once the lizard had finished with him, Song sat mute in the shade under the tree, drawing lines in the sand and then rubbing them out. The lizard said something as it crawled back under its rock, but Song just shook his head and kept tracing the lines, rubbing them out, retracing them.
"Won't do you much good to leave your legacy in the sand, boy," a voice said.
Song looked up, cupping one hand above his eyes to shield against the sun. "... Dad?" he said.
"The same," the man answered and sat down beside Song.
"But you're dead!" Song said.
Song's father - whose name was Auber - looked at him. "Yeah, I am. That mean I can't spend a few moments with my favorite son?"
"Your only son," Song added with a tiny smile.
"Still my favorite. Now, I'd like to lecture you about having forgotten all your old lessons, in particular about not eating every goddamn thing you find. But we don't have the time. See those tiny clouds over there, by the horizon? The dark ones?"
"Yeah."
"Those aren't clouds. By the time they get here, you need to be ready. I ever tell you about the time I got caught by my master for stealing a loaf of bread?"
Song stared at him. "No. Far as I knew, your master was a kind man."
"A kind man. Yeah." Auber picked up a handful of rocks and began throwing them into the distance, one at a time. "That's exactly the kind of stuff you tell a small child whom you know to have big ears and a mouth that never stops."
"Not a kind man, then?" Song said.
His father made as if to speak, then stopped and stared at the ground in silence. After a few moments he dropped the rest of the rocks, rubbed his eyes and sighed. "No," he said. "Not kind at all. Nor were the other masters. I know you've heard some of the stories, because you wouldn't have become an apprentice to a bloody torturer otherwise, but the fact that you're here and that I'm talking to you means that you haven't yet heard them all. So listen." And his father told him of the old master, and the small tools the master had kept locked in a cupboard in his study - tools taken out only when a slave had caused him trouble. He told Song of the other masters and the silent atrocities they'd committed, day after day, and of the countless small rebellions that had eventually bought Song and his mother freedom. He spoke at length about the nature of that freedom, and its continued price.
By the time he was done, Song had not cried, nor made a sound.
Auber got up. "Time I left now," he said. "No fancy goodbyes. We'll meet again, Song."
Song, staring at the ground and slowly grinding his teeth, heard his father take a few steps into the distance. When he finally looked up, Auber was gone.
He rubbed his eyes and looked at the horizon. The clouds had gotten nearer, except ... except his father was right, they weren't really clouds. It looked as if they were hugging the ground a little too closely for that. The longer he stared, the more he felt it resembled a herd of insects, trampling its way through the jungle with the day's bounty carried on their backs.
Day was giving way to afternoon, and he felt the weariness in his bones. His stomach was completely numb. He let his head fall back, against the stem of the tree, and slept.
He woke to the sound of footsteps. It was getting dark, and he had to rub his eyes and strain to see what was approaching. When he did, his breath caught in his throat.
He sat very still as the first one walked up to him. It was a man, or at least what was left of one. Several parts of the body had been cut, burned, or mutilated in some manner. One eyesocket was empty, both ears had been torn off, and the upper lip had been neatly severed in half, but what was left of his face was a near-exact replica of Song's.
The man limped up to Song and dropped down on one knee. He bowed his head, and Song saw that his scalp was infected with dozens of seeping wounds.
"Father," the man said, then got up and walked past Song. The second man kept his head bowed the entire time as he, too, knelt and stumbled past, but Song caught a glimpse of his face; the resemblance was still striking, but a little more faint. More came, all scarred and broken, trudging by like the weight of the sky and the earth had been placed on their shoulders. Father and son, father and son, kneeling to him in unborn potential, and as Song gazed into the distance, he saw that their line lay unbroken to the ends of the earth, a trail of blood and pain, of stagnation and fear, of chains and suffered cruelty until the end of time.
***
Malachai was cleaning his tools when he heard footsteps. He turned, and saw not the boy he'd sent out, but a stranger. Someone who, by the looks at him, hadn't eaten for some time, but whose gaze was cold and unwavering nonetheless.
"I'm ready now," the stranger said. "I'm free."
"I see you're awake, Mr. Forte. Very good. No, don't try to get up. You'll find these straps to be more than your match." The wizened old man smiled and stepped back to enjoy the sight. Forte lay on a metal table, his hands, feet, torso and neck bound by leather straps. He was dressed in the black clothing he'd worn when infiltrating the compound, though his shoes and belt had been removed. The two men were located in a small, dark alcove that was lit only by torches on the walls.
"My name is Vitor Dranera," the old man said, "and I've been awaiting your arrival. Let's get you into a more comfortable position." He held up a thin remote and pressed a button. There was a hum and a click as the table's legs withdrew, leaving it floating in mid-air. Dranera pressed another button and the table began to tilt, the part holding Forte's legs going further and further down until the table was almost completely vertical. Dranera pressed the button again and the table became transparent. Only the straps could be seen, wrapped around Forte's appendages.
"Marvelous, isn't it?" Dranera said. "Magnetism and light, nothing more. We didn't want anything to obscure your view." He took a step and the hovertable followed silently. "Perfect. The table should follow me automatically now. I wondered if the engineers had finally got it right, tell you the truth. It got a little messy last time, particularly when the thing blasted off right into the Sin Eater. Took forever to clean."
"The what?" Forte said.
"Ah! It speaks! Very good." Dranera grinned. "The Sin Eater. It's this box where-"
"Why ... why am I here," said Forte. "Where am I?"
Dranera pursed his lips. "Mister Forte," he said. "I've got some interesting sights to show you, and I'd appreciate if we could dispense with the feigned innocence. You're a secret agent for the Gallente. You're the fifth one this year, and quite frankly we're getting a little tired of the intrusions. What I'm going to do for you, I hope, is slake that immense thirst for knowledge which drives people like you to constantly butt in where they're not wanted. So! Shall we go?" He smiled, and walked slowly out of the alcove, the hovertable that held Forte floating along after him.
They passed through a dark corridor and came to a metal door. It slid open with a hiss, revealing blue, pulsating light. They found themselves in a cavernous room, standing on a small ledge. A metal bridge protruded from the ledge and reached across the entire room, bound on both sides by a very solid-looking metal fence. Tinted floodlights were set in the ceiling, their glare casting strange, giant shadows on the walls as it was reflected from the surface far below the bridge - a surface that was constantly ebbing and flowing.
"A moat?" Forte said. His voice echoed.
"Indeed. A lake, really," Dranera replied. Halfway across, the bridge widened a bit and the metal fence was replaced by a transparent material, enabling onlookers to see the ocean below. Dranera walked there and knelt to pick something up. "These are the Sacred Waters," he said. "It is said that no man shall ascend unless he has been bathed in them." He held up the object for Forte to see. It was a severed finger. "Personally, I've always felt that a rise through clear waters was far too easy a challenge. Watch, please." He leaned over the fence and threw down the finger. It seemed to fall for a long time, until a massive tentacle suddenly whipped out of the water, coiled around it and plunged down again.
They passed over the bridge and out of the room in silence, Dranera grinning all the way.
The next room was similarly built: huge, with a fenced metal bridge passing over a wide expanse below. This time, though, it was land, so deeply forested that nothing could be seen but the trees, and the lamps set in the ceiling cast a bright yellow tinge. Halfway across, Dranera stopped again, and pointed to a small cage that hung from the ceiling some distance away. A man was inside it. "One of yours, I believe," Dranera said. "We've extracted all the information from him we could, so he's of no more use." He raised the remote and pressed a button. With a clank the bottom of the cage gave way and the man plunged screaming into the forest below. There was a series of roars from various places, some loud thumps, and the tops of a few trees swayed. The scream sounded again and again, louder and more raw each time, until it felt like the unfortunate prisoner would burst his lungs in terror and pain. At last they stopped, and there was a wet, crunching sound.
"It's worse than you think," Dranera said with a wink as they passed on. "It's their mating season."
***
Having crossed the second bridge and passed through the entrance on the other side, the room they entered was blissfully devoid of any other life. It was only one floor but larger than the other two combined, and looked like a cross between a funhouse and a retail shop for dentists. Forte had turned white, while Dranera hummed a small tune under his breath. They passed a massive glass cage filled with hundreds of fuzzy, pink teddy bears, their eyes and mouths grotesquely large. "We ... wuv ... you," they intoned in a choir of childlike voices. "Will ... you ... wuv ... us? We ... wuv ... you", over and over.
"Give me the creeps," Dranera said. "We intended them for the children of employees stationed here, but they wouldn't have them. Then we discovered, more or less by accident, that they work perfectly on intruders." He shook his head. "Put a man in there for a day or so and he'll be begging you to kill him. Ah, here's something a bit more civilized." In front of them was a sarcophagus, on each side of which was a metal arm ending in a very long needle. "This is the Sin Eater I told you about earlier. We put the heretic inside, seal it up, then let the needles purify him. Eat up his sins, as it were." He pressed a button, and the metal arms swung into life, pointing the needles at the sarcophagus and slowly pushing them in. There was a muffled scream.
"Did you know the origin of the word 'sarcophagus'?" Dranera said conversationally as the needles penetrated deeper. "Anyway, you can't see it from this angle, but this one is connected to a tube that also pumps in oxygen. We don't want the heretic to choke before he can achieve transcendence." Another muffled scream from inside the coffin. "Let's move on. The smell does get out, heaven knows how, and it's rather unpleasant."
They went deeper into the hall, past all sorts of things, including a large vat full of boiling tar with a series of different sized funnels lying beside it ("What do you do with the funnels?" "You really don't want to know"), and a transparent cylinder with thousands of tiny tubes connected to its sides ("Compressed air. Flattens you to a pulp, bit by tiny bit, and you get to watch all the way").
At last they came to a darkened, open area. Dranera raised his remote and pressed two buttons at once. On cue, the lights in the entire place went off, plunging the two men into total darkness.
A click sounded and one floodlight set in the ceiling lit up, casting a cone of light down on the floor in front of them. It illuminated a contraption that itself seemed to cast the light everywhere: It was made of glass-like material, transparent, about the height of a man, and shaped like a five-armed starfish. Each arm reflected the light iridescently, like living diamonds were writhing on its surface.
"This is the Holy Star," Dranera said and walked over to it, the hovertable following close on his heels. He reached out and laid the palm of one hand flat against the surface of an arm, then held it out to Forte. His palm was covered in grooves, small indentations where countless tiny barbs had made their mark. "Wonderful, isn't it?" he said. "So long as there's no power, that's all it does. I've even got a small replica on a stick, to scratch my back."
"And when there's power?" Forte asked.
"Glad you asked. Let's back off a little." He took a couple of steps away from the star, then shouted, "Fire!"
There was a twang and a squeak, and from out of the darkness shot a small, furry bundle. It hit the Holy Star with a sound like something soft and wet hitting something hard and unforgiving, and hung there, spread-eagled and flat like a pancake, its back turned out to the world.
"Is that a ... furrier?" Forte said.
"Indeed. Revolting little critters," Dranera said. "We use them a lot in our experiments."
The furrier began to slowly drift down, leaving a crimson trail. Dranera said, "Now let's see the Star shine," and traced the double bow of the Amarrian sigil in the air with the remote before pressing it. The star began to hum, very softly, and the furrier's descent stopped. There was a noise like someone sucking air through their teeth. Little threads, tendrils of red, started weaving their way from the rodent into the Holy Star, like drops of ink in water.
"You're killing a furrier?" Forte said.
"Think of it more as a," Dranera waived his hand in the air, "reeducation."
"You're killing a furrier."
"Shush now. Watch."
As the tendrils progressed deeper into the star, the furrier started thinning out noticeably. Dents began to appear in its fur, and a few hairs dropped off and floated to the ground. As Forte stared, the furrier's legs went into the star, deeper and deeper as if it were taking a slow dive into a pond of invisibility. The only thing that came out on the other end was more tendrils, feeling their way like floating strands of red gossamer.
Eventually even the fur went, and the tendrils turned from red to white and then to a brownish gray. Then there was no more furrier.
"That was one of the most twisted things I've ever seen," Forte said.
"Well, we do try our best," Dranera said. "And now, I fear, our little journey has come to an end. We're quite busy, as you can imagine, and much as I'd like to show you more of our establishment I do believe you have another pressing engagement." He smiled at Forte, pointed the remote at him and pressed a button. The hovertable, still vertical, floated around lazily until it had Forte a few steps away from the Holy Star and directly facing it.
"Goodbye, Mister Forte," Dranera said, and walked off into the darkness.
At a snail's pace, the hovertable began floating towards the Holy Star.
***
"Right, what've we got so far?" Dranera said, peering at an image on a screen.
"He's still struggling," a tech said, seated in front of a control board. "Hovertable's taken him a third of the way already."
Dranera frowned. "I was assured that he'd have more than enough time to free himself."
"He will. He doesn't seem all too stressed about it, more just wriggling about. I'd say he's taking it easy."
"Good," Dranera said and put a hand on the tech's shoulder. "Because if he dies, I hardly need tell you who'll be next on the Holy Star."
"No sir," the tech said, focusing intently on the screens in front of him. "He seems to be - yes, I think he's got it."
On the monitors, Forte had gotten one hand free and was working the straps holding the other hand. Speakers set into the walls beside each monitor gave out a small buzzing sound as each strap fell away.
"Did we get that?" Dranera asked.
"Perfectly, yes. From about eight different angles in normal light, along with the two infrareds and a few other of the specialized cameras. We'll find out how he did it."
"Excellent. I'm sick and tired of these people escaping. We had to lock down the entire compound after the last one got out of the Sin Eater."
"Indeed," the tech said. They watched as Forte worked free the last leg strap, having managed to cut through all the others. He rubbed his ankles for a moment, then set off on a run. Two of the monitors took on a greenish tint, their cameras switching to infrared as they followed Forte on his flight through the darkened hall. "Do you want us to stop recording?" the tech asked.
"No, keep it going," Dranera replied. "Might make a nice instructional for our recruits. I'm curious as to what traps-ah, I do believe he ... yes ... took a left there, so that should put him right into-"
There was a crackle from the speakers, and the screens flashed a blinding white. When they returned to normal, all they showed was a small pile of ashes on the floor, right where Forte had been a moment before.
"Shame. I was rather looking forward to watching him dodge a few more of those," Dranera said. "Oh well. Send someone to sweep up, will you?"
Sonal awoke to the sound of crying, which filled the room like a siren. It came from the cot beside his bed. He lay very still, hoping it was a one-off, that his son would fall asleep again in a second.
The crying stopped, and Sonal heard an intake of breath. For an instant he thought that was the end of it, but then, lungs properly filled, Aki really started screaming.
"Come on," Sonal said, now shaking off the dregs of sleep. "Come on. Damnit. Come on. Sleep. Sleep!"
Behind him, Helena mumbled, then turned onto her back and sighed deeply. She'd been patient, Sonal knew, but countless nights of crying had taken their toll. The lack of privacy didn't help, either, since Aki would wake at the tiniest noise and demand to be held. He was fourteen months old, and had recently started yelling and screaming until moved out of the crib and into bed with Sonal.
"Matin, can you take care of that, please?" she said in a dull tone. She only called him by his last name when annoyed.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Sonal slowly clambered out of bed. The floor gave him an icy chill; he always forgot to put on his slippers. He reached into the crib and lifted out Aki, who immediately stopped crying. Aki's mother had abandoned them shortly after the birth; she was now somewhere in low sec. It was inconceivable to most people that any mother could leave her child, but Aki's mother hadn't been like most people.
Sonal rocked Aki, who had descended to that hazy stage between sleeping and waking, and who seemed content yet ready to unleash another blood-curdling scream should he be let go.
"I'm sorry," Sonal said.
Helena sighed again, this time without the undertone of exasperation. "It's all right," she said. "It won't last forever."
She moved closer to him. "Besides," she said, "I'm only here three times a week. I don't know how you can stand night after night of this."
"Neither do I, really," Sonal said. The room felt like it was slowly spinning. He could hardly sit up straight.
Silence descended.
"It's really good having you here," Sonal added.
"Thanks," Helena said. She traced lines on the cooling bedsheets.
After a while, she added, "Do you ever think about us?"
"Constantly," Sonal said.
"No, I mean ... do you ever think about how this will go? First time, I came over here only for dinner and ended up spending the night. And ever since then, I've been here half the time. Where's this leading?"
Sonal kept rocking Aki, and every now and then would rearrange some fold of the child's clothing to make him more comfortable. "Does it have to lead anywhere?"
"Sonal-"
"I'm serious. I've said that I love having you here with me. But my life is focused on raising Aki, and having enough money for both of us."
She reached out and stroked his shoulder, once. "How long since she left?" she asked.
His breath caught. Then he exhaled, a long release of breath. "Almost a year now."
"You've built walls," she said.
He nodded.
"But you're lonely, still."
"Of course I am. Doesn't mean I should let just anyone in. I've got a responsibility to Aki."
"No," she said in a much colder tone. "You certainly shouldn't let just anyone in."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean-"
"Never mind."
"It wasn't-"
"Never mind."
He sighed. He attempted to put Aki back in his bed, but the child began to wail, so Sonal sat back down and continued rocking him.
"I just ... I don't want to mess this up. You know?" he said. "I've had a hard enough time keeping my own life going, and suddenly I'm a single father. I'm responsible for him, for everything he'll be. I still don't know if the relationship with his mother was a mistake, but he's the most precious thing in my life right now, and I've had a hard enough time keeping my own life going. I don't want to do anything wrong."
"I know," Helena said. "I understand. And I respect that. But you're so repressed, Sonal. I knew you for a while before I came over for dinner, and I've never seen you relax and let go, not even once. You keep this rigid, rigid control of yourself, and not only is it pushing away people who care, it's eating you up. Being a grownup doesn't mean you can't act like a child every now and then."
Sonal turned and smiled a little. "I wish. I hear what you're saying, but I honestly don't dare. Everything I do these days seems focused on Aki, whether I like it or not." He thought it over, then added, "I do play with him, you know."
"I know. It's not the same, though. I've seen you play, and you're always in control, always looking out for the boy. And the instant you feel that I'm watching you, you stop playing altogether."
She sighed, and continued, "I don't want to butt into your business. You're a great father, that much I can tell. But you really, really, really need to let yourself go, and learn that you can do it while still being a dad."
Sonal, not knowing what to say, rubbed the back of his neck.
Helena took over and gave him a quick backrub, as much to show closeness as to help him relax. "Tired?"
He nodded. "I could sleep forever."
"Drones?" she asked.
He nodded again. Setting down Aki - who resumed crying right away - he reached for and opened a door in a clothes cabinet, and from the top drawer took out a handful of tiny machines. He flipped a switch on each, and they came to buzzing life. The toy drones were noisy and gave off a faint but unpleasant odour, but they were the only thing that worked, short of keeping Aki in the main bed.
He sat back on the bed, blearily watching the drones as they began flying around. Aki was immediately enraptured. The drones couldn't be kept operational all night - not with their noise and stink - but hopefully they'd be enough to quiet down the baby, and not simply keep him awake.
The drones were controlled from a central mechanism located back at the repair shop where Sonal worked. Sonal was a mechanic, and had access to all sorts of special technology. Just the other day, he recalled, he'd been complaining that the drones sometimes didn't keep Aki's interest, and someone had inserted one of the new drone rigs into the control mechanism, noting only they'd, "Fixed that for ya."
It seemed to him that the drones were flying in slightly more complex patterns, weaving back and forth over Aki's bed, but it might just be his imagination.
Helena reached out and began stroking his back again. He sighed, a mix of tiredness and gentle pleasure, and let his head hang down.
A noise made him look up. The drones were flying a lot faster.
"Something's wrong. We need to stop them," he said.
"Why? Aki doesn't seem to mind."
"All it would take is for one of them to fly into his face, his eyes."
"He'll be fine," Helena said. "The drones have no sharp edges or pointy bits. You know that."
"Yeah..." he said. "Still."
"All right. You go ahead and grab them, big man," Helena said in a slightly teasing manner.
Sonal couldn't power them down en masse, since the only way to do that would be to turn off the ship rig they'd hidden away back at the repair shop. The only way to stop them was to turn each one off individually.
He cursed himself for ever having turned them on. He was so sleep-deprived, every move he made felt like it was done underwater.
He reached out, aiming to catch the drones in flight, but they zoomed out of his way. He tried again, and the drones flew in figure-eights around his arms, oblivious and going ever faster. One drone got snagged on the toy wind chimes hanging over Aki's bed, tore through them and kept on flying, like a kite gone mad. Another apparently miscalculated a turn and plowed directly into the open cabinet, bounced around in there for a bit, then bolted right back out, a pair of crumpled underpants dangling from it.
Sonal was grabbing for the drones, but kept missing them. He got increasingly frustrated, hissing in anger every time he pawed at empty air. The drone flight patterns were getting even more complicated; they wove knots around his hands. It wouldn't last forever, as the things had only a limited amount of fuel, but Sonal couldn't imagine waiting them out. The embarrassment of being unable to stop them was bad enough as it was.
After watching him for a while, Helena finally clambered out of bed and joined in. It was a clumsy charade: They kept bumping into one another, and while swinging their arms around they would accidentally hit each other on the hips, shoulders and face.
Sonal grunted in frustration, but contrary to his expectations, Helena's mood seemed to brighten with every swipe she made. Eventually she wasn't so much grabbing as dancing around, waving her hands at the drones like she was trying to divert the flight of birds. The drones, appearing thoroughly confused by this behavior, slowed down their flights considerably. Meanwhile, Sonal, so exhausted from continual lack of sleep that he was swaying on his feet, withdrew into a corner and bided his time. He kept a close eye on the drones flying around in front of him, timed his movements, then, in one swift fell, mashed his hands together around one drone. He turned it off, and it buzzed quietly down to the floor.
Helena, stopping to take a breath, seemed to notice him for the first time. She gave him a strange look, not at all unpleasant. "I'm not doing this all by myself, you know," she said with a sly grin. Before he could react, she walked over to him, grasped his arms in a firm grip, and began to wave them around. "Like this."
"I can't," he managed.
"Rubbish," she said. "Besides, my hands are tired. Your turn now."
He stepped hesitantly into the middle of the room and began waving at the drones. They easily avoided his movements.
"Think of Aki," Helena suggested. "Like you said, eventually one of them might hit him."
That was enough for Sonal. He began waving at the drones, still carefully at first, then with more and more abandon, until at last he was spinning around like a wind-up toy spiralling out of control. He was so utterly spent that he hardly knew what he was doing any longer, and as he moved, sweaty and gasping for breath, he felt a mental block begin to give way; old exhaustion burning itself out at last. He knew how incredibly silly he must look, and he found that he no longer cared. His son, standing up in bed, was giggling and smiling, and Helena was singing to herself as she danced around beside him, trying to catch the drones. The backwash of spent adrenaline rolled over him, and he started to laugh, too. Helena turned and caught his eye, strained to keep her composure, then exploded in laughter as well. They kept moving, moving, moving as the drones zoomed back and forth around them, Sonal delirious with the feeling of being a child at last. All the while, in his crib, Aki giggled like mad.
Once he'd had the remains of his ship towed into the docking bay, Auduban disembarked with the box. He could hardly think straight at this point; all that remained in his head was to get the light, the burning light, to as many people as possible.
He staggered to customs, hoping he wouldn't be picked out. He wanted a public place, with lots of people, for when he opened the box.
Customs stopped him right away and pulled him aside.
They asked him what was in the box. He stared at them, trying to think of something believable to say. Whatever it was he eventually blurted out, it wasn't enough. One of the customs people took the box from him, set it on the ground and opened it. The man's eyes grew wide, his mouth dropped open, and his face turned ashen.
Auduban sighed, reached into his pocket, and clicked a button on his small remote.
The box lit up with the burning light.
***
His sect had used Fedos as part of their cleansing rituals. He would now use them to cleanse himself, to purify for the task at hand.
He lay down in the ship's main corridor, naked and cold. He was having trouble keeping his balance, and strange images constantly floated through his vision, but it was all right. The Fedos needed no guidance.
He lay deathly still. Eventually, they came.
***
This was goodbye. This was the burning of bridges. Auduban's friends were no longer talking to him, and his family had thrown him out of the house. His fascination with the Amarr had been fine with everyone - it was good to know your enemy - but when it morphed into infatuation, things changed.
He thought of nothing but Amarr. More specifically, he thought of nothing but her. Her words of religious faith and devotion had touched him, and when he'd written to her, and she'd responded, he'd felt like his life had begun anew.
The snow crunched under his boots, and the spaceship ahead reflected a blinding glare.
He was leaving now. With her. For the new life.
***
The ship had nearly imploded. Half its controls had blown out, and most of its infrastructure had been torn to pieces like paper in a storm.
The crew was dead, and what remained of their bodies had been scattered over the entire ship, burnt and shredded almost beyond recognition.
Sanada was dead, too. Auduban, who had just barely survived the blast, found what was left of her in her quarters.
***
Deep in the bowels of the ship, surrounded by humming machinery, Auduban got to work. He jammed, twisted, cut and hammered each rig into its proper location, with the occasional help from heavy tools. It was ugly, ugly hackwork, but it would simply have to do.
***
This was the tenth station in as many days, and yet again they'd had to flee. They were exhausted. Each time, they'd been run off by angry protesters. Apparently there were some who were angered by the apocalyptic message they preached, not realizing that desperate times called for desperate words. Much to Auduban's disappointment, some of those protesters had been Amarrians. One or two had yelled at him for being a Minmatar, which he didn't mind, but the rest had focused their anger on Sanada, accusing her of zealotry and extremism. Auduban couldn't stand that. Instead of giving proper, constructive criticism against the message, they chose to harangue the beautiful messenger.
It had gotten too much for some of Sanada's followers. The group, already small, was dwindling now. Auduban's devotion, already fierce, grew to fill the gap.
By the time they got to the eleventh station, the crew had shrunk to a third of what they'd started with, and of the several support ships that had followed, none remained.
***
It was getting a little harder to breathe. Auduban could still move and think, but any time he turned his head a little too fast, the whole deck started spinning.
He was the only human survivor. The Fedos, though, hadn't just lived; they'd prospered. Their containment fields had broken, and now they were crawling all over the ship, gorging themselves on crewmember parts, and breeding.
Auduban didn't mind the Fedos. As the ship's garbage chutes were bent and broken out of shape, the animals were the only option left to get rid of much of the trash. Usually the stuff'd be shunted into the ship's exhausts and burned to dust. Now the Fedos ate it.
***
In the storage room were several unused rigs that Sanada's crew had liberated from other vessels. Rigs were permanent alteration kits for ships; they improved the output of various subsystems such as shields and weapon controls, and once inserted could not be removed again. The insertion was only supposed to take place under controlled conditions, preferably by a qualified professional.
They didn't have qualified professionals here, and certainly didn't have controlled conditions. Auduban had a little mechanical expertise, enough to know where to plug in the stuff, but that was about it.
He picked up a few rig units and headed into the heart of the ship, unsure of what he was doing.
***
The ship's atmospheric controls were malfunctioning. Auduban figured it wouldn't be long before they gave out completely. Perhaps they'd have just enough left for the ship to hobble back to the nearest station, but he didn't care. There was nothing for him there anymore. Nothing at all.
***
"Nothing I say will work," he said in desperation. "There's no way I can carry our message the way you did."
She fell silent at this.
"I wish, I truly wish that we could show them what I saw in you," he said, "but we can't."
"What did you see in me?" she asked. When he hesitated, she added, in a gentler tone, "How did you see it? What was it that moved you beyond words?"
He thought about this. Eventually, he said, "The light in you. That's the best I can do. I looked at you, at your face, your eyes, and it was like you had an inner light, suffused with purity, that shone through. And everything it illuminated became a part of you."
"Big words," she said, and he smiled.
"I wrote it down once," he explained. "Still remember it."
"Then we need to let them see the light," she said. "The light that shines from me."
He nodded. He looked around, casting for ideas.
That's when he saw the flashlight.
***
On his way to the ship's core he passed the Fedo cages. Fedos were small omnivorous animals, little more than a nervous system with a stomach, and looked like slabs of meat with feelers. They had no sight nor hearing, communicating by smell alone, and were used extensively for ship cleaning, their main diet consisting of the waste that always accumulates on closed vessels. They were kept in separate cages when not in use, as otherwise they'd breed endlessly and fill up the ship. They were a reviled but vital part of any prolonged stay in space.
Auduban squatted in front of their cages. There was something so calming about watching them squirm and wriggle. He wondered if humans felt more pleasure than lesser creatures like this, if the complexity of the human mind allowed access to a deeper kind of enjoyment in life. On the other hand, perhaps simplicity was the key to pleasure, in which case creatures like the Fedos were way ahead of the game. They could feel any kind of pleasure with far more purity than humans could, unfettered as they were by complex emotions and doubt.
He realized that he'd been overcomplicating his situation. They needed money, they'd get it from pirates, and so they needed a stronger ship. And he had the solution right here. Straight line of logic, from start to finish. Anything else was only a distraction.
He walked on, rigs in hand.
***
One day, Sanada began to speak to him. "We need to bring them the light," she said, her voice resounding in his head. "With all the force we can muster."
"I can't," he said. "I can't. I failed. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I can't do this alone-"
"You won't have to," she said.
He fell quiet.
"I will bring them the light," she said. "But I need your help."
Through the haze of infected air and Fedo stink, he tried to clear his mind. "What can I do?" he asked.
"Help me speak," she said.
***
Since the Fedos had so much to eat, their emissions greatly increased. Auduban didn't mind the stink so much. But coupled with the increasing lack of air, it was beginning to make him feel quite odd. Quite odd indeed.
***
Once he had the rigs in place, he put away the tools, said a silent prayer to Sanada, and headed to the control room, where he sat down at the main control table. He wasn't a crewmember by any means, but he'd watched, and he knew which buttons activated what.
He pressed one. Nothing happened.
He sat back in his chair, rubbed his eyes and thought about his next move.
Then he heard a spark, somewhere. Then another, and another.
There was a brief moment of utter stillness. Then the rigs went active, sirens blared, and the explosions started.
***
It was just the two of them now, along with the ship crew. The rest had fled. Sanada was capable of commanding the ship, with Auduban's help, but they were running out of money for the crew and would have to think of something soon.
While Sanada slept, Auduban sneaked out of the living quarters and into the storage room. They had all sorts of equipment in there, some of it acquired through illegal means, and had been planning to sell it, but no station would let them dock. The only option remaining was to fight space pirates and claim their bounties, but the crew had absolutely refused, saying the ship had no chance in combat unless it had some kind of ace up its sleeve.
In a quiet moment, Sanada had recently said to him that she was running out of hope, and on the verge of giving up.
Auduban wasn't about to let that happen.
***
This was the end of the world. This was the fall and the shame, the final mistake, the plunge into unforgivable darkness.
Auduban cradled Sanada's head in his arms. Her torso was nowhere to be seen.
***
His sect had been removed from the religious order. Apparently they'd gotten too radical, too extremist even for the Amarrians. Sanada didn't care; she said they'd take to the stars again, preach the word. Some people were unhappy with this, but for Auduban, there was no question: He would follow. He loved Sanada like he had never loved anyone before. It was a love so pure it transcended language and, almost, emotions as well: It burned so fiercely inside of him that it felt like a tangible force, immune to thought and deed. Everything she said was truth, and everything she did was right.
***
With her instructions echoing in his head, he began working the ship on a course to a station. The vessel was a wreck, and Auduban doubted he could even make it past customs with the box, and Sanada's head inside it, but he had to try.
The Fedos crawled over him. Their emissions felt like perfume.
***
He scratched the first one behind the calciferous ridges on its back. The Fedo, excited, scrambled higher onto his chest. He kept scratching, but his fingers slipped and poked through, into its soft meat. It didn't seem to mind. He could swear that it was vibrating from pleasure.
He felt as their mouths, with their tiny rows of coarse, serrated cartilage, suckled at him, cleaning, looking for nourishment.
The one he'd scratched was now at his right nipple. He closed his eyes and sighed.
***
Once he'd inserted the flashlight, he put the lightgiver into a box. He'd rigged up a remote for it.
He tested it, clicking the remote.
Sanada's eyes shone with light.
I think I found it easier to hate them. I had to feel something; being neutral about it implied that I did not care enough to form an opinion. Without that, there would be no reason or drive to continue. The feeling of hate allowed me to be here, to do what needed to be done without pause or contrary thought. I did not pity them, though, for I had run short of pity long ago; so much so that I had none to give, even for those who needed it.
I watched them jump into the system, a deep space system well beyond the effective jurisdiction of the Directive Enforcement Department, even beyond many of the usual pirate groups' raiding territories. I sat, silently ticking off the reasons for my hate of them, as each one gathered into formation and prepared to warp past me. This one had spoken too loudly against my proposals in the boardroom, that one had tried to rally support against me amongst the investors. More gate activity flashed on my screen; this one had attached himself to the coat tails of my eventual successor, another had made a feeble attempt at spying on me only to ruin it by approaching too closely... on it went down the line, until the last of the thirteen aligned his ship with the destination and the fleet began to cycle their warp drives.
This one, was different... this one had been a friend of sorts, someone I had known for many years. Despite the years of friendship, countless hours spent working together on vital projects, days spent visiting his family, keeping his back at my own expense in times of crisis and despair, this one had turned against me, betrayed me to my enemies. Could I really hate him? This was not another face I barely knew, another face from the board room or the factory floor, or an enemy who had always been a staunch advocate of the other side. This was a person I had spent time with, both good and bad. I knew the names of his children, who he’d had an affair with in the office last year, where he had gone to school and what his favourite lunchtime meal was, amongst dozens of other trivial memories.
I knew that it needed to be done, that all of them had wronged me, had directly contributed to my loss of power, my loss of prestige, and the loss of everything that made me who I was; anything beyond that was simply extraneous information, not pertinent to the crime for which they were being punished. I knew I could hate every single one of them, that they all had to die for their sins to be absolved. I followed them in warp, unseen and unheard, to a still-rich asteroid belt not far from the fourth moon of the system’s eighteenth planet, where their group of exhumers and cargo vessels began the tedious work of stripping the asteroids whilst the combat patrol established its barrier. Gliding effortlessly between a pair of cruisers, I sat at point blank range from my old friend and sent the all clear message to my new friends. I checked my weapons’ and electronic warfare systems’ status as the screeching sound of a dozen decloaking recon cruisers filled the system. Only 40 rounds per gun: not enough, I thought.
I hate reloading in the middle.
In this room, the only sound was the faint hum of the humidifier, and the slightly nasal breaths of the room's only occupant. That person was named Robert, called Bob, overweight and nearing retirement age, and when he worked on his blueprints, it was to the exclusion of everything else.
Bob set aside the Vespa schematics and rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day, and the deadline for the blueprint improvement was fast approaching. Deadlines made him uncomfortable.
Usually he would close the door to his office, turn on the humidifier to keep his eyes from getting dry and his throat from getting raspy, and set to work. And when he worked, he was committed. He didn't understand those people who frittered away their time on the job. The workplace was for work. When you were given a job to do, you did it, and if you did it well, you might be given the same job again, and then you knew you could do it in time. Routine and habit. That was the key.
Each blueprint was different, of course, even ones for the same items. All a blueprint did was show you a way to manufacture a given item in some way that the end result would meet the specifications set forth by the authorities. This included not only the attributes of the item, but the amount of material you had to include for the item to be considered structurally sound. The rest was up to you.
Despite the design freedoms it was all fairly standardized, which Bob quite liked. Special teams of researchers could re-work blueprints to require less materials or time for production, and scientifically minded pilots could help out as well, but all in all there was little variation between jobs. Bob had long since found that, given the rigid requirements for the attributes of each produced item, the corresponding blueprints tended to be rather similar to one another. One Vespa blueprint might have a different circuit outlay and a few extra screws here and there, but that was about it. Most of the time went into putting the new blueprint through standardized testing, to ensure that its products would stand up to the stress of regular use.
There was a knock. Bob looked up, irritated. "Yes?" he said.
The door opened and a young man stepped in. He was in his early twenties, hair well cut, clothing casual but not too sloppy. He was smiling. He walked to Bob's desk and stopped, and it took Bob a couple of beats to realize that the man had extended his hand. Bob shook it.
"John," he said. "I'm told we'll be working together."
"Is that a fact," Bob said. "You're new on the team, I take it."
"Only started today," John said.
"Well then," Bob said, not getting up, "I'll be filling you in on what we're doing here."
John made to say something, but Bob kept going, "It's routine, for the most part. We get a blueprint, sign the standard confidentiality waiver, and off we go. There's a deadline for each task, but they're fairly easy to hit. We log things pretty well, especially work procedures. Obviously we can't keep logs of the blueprint contents, but we've gotten pretty good at logging extraneous stuff, patterns and suchlike, and those often come in use when we get another blueprint of the same type, even if it has a completely different way of building the item."
He motioned at the shelves beside him, which held rows of thin plastic datasheets. "Everything is logged. I like to keep backups, just in case, you know. I also have certain ways of signing off on things. It's not strictly necessary, since our computer system takes care of officially signing our work and placing it in the proper category, but I like to add a little touch of my own. So all files I've worked on have my digital signature, just to be sure that I've finished with them."
John again made to say something, and Bob cut him off again. "I don't mind if you ask questions, and you can come to me anytime you like. In fact, I'd prefer it that way. There's no reason to go bothering the big people about tiny little things, especially when you've just started and are still finding your feet, eh?" He smiled. "Exactly. Now, what project did you want to start on? I've got a Vespa here that's half done and I'm sure could be good warm-up. I'd check on it periodically-"
"Actually, I was thinking of the brand-" John started.
"Now, please don't interrupt me," Bob said with a smile. "There are certain ways of doing things here, and I just want to make sure you're following them from the start. What's your specialty? Drones? Guns? Armor? Or maybe something a little more complex, like electronics or shields. I don't imagine you've gotten up to ships yet, but with time and proper training I'm sure you'll get a chance to try your hand at them."
"Thanks," John said, "but it's a little more complicated than that."
Bob blinked. "Really, now?"
"I do all of those. Ships included."
"Oh, I'm sure you've done tests, and all sorts of training routines," Bob said, still smiling. "But that was in school, no doubt. The stakes are a little higher here. There's proper workflows to consider, order to be kept. You can't just toss off some research project in an hour, thank you and go home. You've got to make sure everything is right and proper."
"Even with the new project?" John asked.
"New project? What new project?" Bob asked. "I haven't heard anything about a new project."
"Did you ask?" John said. Bob's smile disappeared. "I'm sorry, that came out wrong," John added quickly. "But I'm here to work on a new branch of research with your corporation. It's no longer enough to improve the time and cost of building the same items. We need to be more creative. We need to make something new."
"Something new," Bob echoed in a leaden tone.
"There's a meeting starting quite soon, and I just wanted to introduce myself before then. It'll all be explained there. I thought you knew about it, though."
Bob didn't meet his gaze. "I don't much hold with meetings," he said. "Senseless chatter, half the time. A man's place is at his desk, doing the work he knows."
"That may change," John said, smiling, and left the office.
***
"Welcome, Bob. Have a seat, please." The woman greeting him was Joroutte Duvolle, the CEO of Duvolle Laboratories. Joroutte was a people person and routinely attended or even held lower level staff meetings. Bob liked her. She knew her business, but trusted her people to get on with their work with a minimum of interruption. She might occasionally spend a little too much time chattering with people, Bob thought, when a CEO surely had more important things to do, but there was no purpose in bringing it up. Bob preferred to stay on friendly terms with his superiors. It kept the order of things clean and simple.
John was there, too. That was not clean and simple. Bob smiled at him, and he smiled back. Neither man extended a hand.
Joroutte motioned Bob to sit. She then activated a video projection, bathing the room in the faint green glow from the holographs. A screensaver of pies and charts revolved in front of their eyes.
"We're starting a new thing, Bob," Joroutte said. "Not all of us, but we need everyone to have a working knowledge of it. And that has to include you."
Bob nodded.
"Have you studied the materials related to this new process?" Joroutte asked.
"Well, see, there's just so much to do," Bob replied. "The new batch of Vespas just came in, and then there's the weapons and the ships-"
"All right. That's okay," Joroutte said. "We know you're a hard worker, no worries." She sat down at the table, beside Bob. "We need you on this, Robert. Most everyone in our lab group has already tried their hand at invention. You're the only one who's left and isn't on sick leave. I know it isn't your favourite thing, but you're a fastidious, diligent worker, and I'm sure you'll find your rhythm in this in no time."
Bob looked crestfallen. "What do I have to do?"
Joroutte said, "That's where our new man comes in. John?"
John stood, cleared his throat, and took out a small laser pointer. It had an invisible beam that, when shined on the holographs, would alter the colour of the targeted area, highlighting it. He pressed a button, and the graphs turned from the pies and charts to a picture of a stick figure and a few square boxes. Each box had a label.
"This is the new process," John said, "and even though it can be a little complicated to work with at first - the research techniques are quite a bit more demanding than the ones you've done so far - it's really not that big a deal. You, as a lab researcher, take in a blueprint just like you've always done."
He indicated one box on the image, which lit up with the words 'Tech 1 BP'. "You'll forgive the shorthand," John said, "but it fits better on a slide, and I assume we're all familiar with the working slang for these things. If not," he added, "just let me know."
Bob remained silent.
"We're fine," Joroutte said. "Go on."
"The process really is the same as before. We take this tech 1 blueprint, and we improve it. Except the improvements are so extensive that we actually end up with a different item-"
"What?" Bob said, turning to Joroutte. "This, this goes against all procedures."
"Easy there," Joroutte said. "Let's hear him out."
John continued. "To do this, we need more than just the ingenuity of our researchers. Certain companies have prepared agglomerations of design patterns that can be automatically applied to the blueprints. We use those datacores, along with the data interfaces provided for them - it's the only way to access their data, and their contents are kept quite secret, obviously - and by doing so, we can simplify the projects enough for our regular researchers to handle. A bit of hard work, and perhaps some extra materials, and we end up with a new blueprint for a tech 2 item." He turned to Bob. "You really are doing the same thing as before, improving the design of an item. You're just getting a little computerized help to do it, and you end up with something new, in this case a copy of a tech 2 blueprint. We'd have liked to make originals, but the DRM on these things is horrendous, so we only have permission to make copies.
"And in case you're wondering, the datacores will never replace you or anyone else here. They're single-use only, and always need a guiding hand."
"I hope you're happy with this," Joroutte said. "It's a big step for us, but it's vital. We have to keep up with the competition, and any day now we may be contacted by pilots asking us to do this. Stagnation is the end, Bob. Stagnation is death."
"Do you have any questions?" John asked.
Bob stared into open air for a moment. Then he said, "No. No, nothing at all," slowly stood up and left the room.
***
The humidifier kept his office rather steamy. Bob liked it that way. He was getting a little cold in his old age, and besides, the heat seemed to discourage people from hanging around too long in his office. The door was closed, the air was warm, and the Vespa blueprint lay in front of him untouched.
There was a knock. John opened the door and entered without waiting for an answer. He sat down.
The two men stared at each other in silence.
Eventually, John said, "I'm here to work with you, Robert. If you have questions, or need any guidance, all you need is ask and I'll be there to help out."
Bob remained silent.
"The process really is that simple. And we won't get left in the cold by some hungry pilot who drops a project on our doorstep and leaves. The only ones who even get through the screening process are those who know something about the subject matter. Somebody asks us to change a shuttle into a battleship, we toss him out on his ass."
"And if we can't turn a shuttle into a battleship," Bob said, "then what? You toss us out on our asses, too?"
John looked at him, then looked at his desk. "Vespa blueprint, you said?"
"That's right."
"Material?"
"Time."
"Difficult?" John asked.
"Not once you get the hang of it."
"You like getting the hang of things," John said. He didn't wait for an answer. "There's a reason why you're the last one to start on this. There's a reason why the CEO of your corp held a special meeting just for you. There's a reason why this caught you by surprise even though it's been widely known in the corp for ages that a change was coming. There's also a reason you work with your door closed. And they're all the same reason."
"Stagnation," Bob said.
John nodded.
"Is death," Bob said.
"Of a sort," John replied.
Bob sighed deeply. He ran his fingers through his hair, then steepled them at the back of his neck and leaned back in his chair, looking at the ceiling. In his mind, he felt like he was enveloped in a net that was growing tighter and tighter, restraining his movement, trapping him. And he knew that the net was his own skin, and as it had shrunk through the years, he'd shrunk with it, for fear of accidentally tearing his way out.
John waited to see if he'd speak. When it eventually became apparent that the conversation was over, he stood and said, "Good luck to you, Robert. It's going to be fine."
Bob stood as well, but remained silent. He nodded.
John turned, went to the door, opened it wide and slowly walked out, leaving the door opened behind him. The humidity in the room lowered from contact with the outside air, and smells and sounds drifted in.
After a while, Bob walked across the room, and closed the door with a click.
And from the mess of blood and viscera, there emerges the soul of a new machine. It moves in a herky-jerky fashion; a pair of dark orange eyes slowly light up, a few feelers twitch into motion. It's a mix of wires, bolts and circuitry.
It crawls out from the organic wreckage, trailing various substances. It doesn't look back at its former host, which is making increasingly faint guttural sounds. Eventually the host falls silent.
The drone lies very still. It's the size of a fist, which is typical of the lesser workers. Fighter drones may grow up to the size of frigates, but they need smaller entities like the workers to clean and repair them.
There are no smaller entities than the workers, leastwise not autonomous ones. Workers are easily replaceable; they're not worth the effort of repairs. When one of them breaks, there's really nothing for it to do except fix itself, in whatever way it can.
This drone is broken, and it hasn't been able to fix itself.
It's lying on the floor of a laboratory, surrounded by all manner of scientific equipment. It's also lying in the middle of an expanding pool of blood, courtesy of its unwilling surrogate.
After a few moments it makes a buzzing sound that's almost like a harrumph, shakes a few dark flecks off its metal carapace, and flies out of the room.
***
Drones can operate at minimal capacity, diverting resources as necessary. This is even more important for the smaller ones, who don't always have access to repair facilities. When no healer is nearby, you apply a tourniquet to the wound and carry on.
This drone, running only basic operational support, enters another room, flying through an open doorway. The door has been torn off its hinges and is lying to the side. Laboratory equipment is strewn all over the place; the drone hovers over broken glass, bent wireframes and various bits of circuitry. It trails a long series of cords, like the line at the end of a kite. The cords are interwoven with thinner strings, some biological - remainders of its former host - and some metallic, crackling and sparking as they brush against the metal debris on the floor. The drone doesn't seem to notice.
There is a small series of red LEDs on the underside of the drone. They start blinking, slowly. The drone is telling the world that it is becoming operational.
In the piles of broken equipment it comes to a single beaker, untouched and unbroken. Extending one pincer, it hovers closer. The pincer closes its metal fingers around the undamaged beaker and slowly lifts it from the ground for further inspection. The beaker is empty, but has been spattered with some mixture of white and red. The drone tries to bring it closer, but exerts too much force on the beaker, and it breaks.
The drone trembles. It was hoping that this time around, it would be reborn whole. It has tried so many times to fix itself.
Satisfied, at least, that its LED heartbeat is regular, it decides to ignore the broken beaker. It is only to be expected that a newborn would be a little clumsy. That's how it works. Then you grow, and you mature, and you heal. You don't have to live with being a broken, malfunctioning piece of malevolent creation.
The drone flies into the next room.
***
This one is fairly hard to navigate through; the gas fumes that leak from broken pipes are obstructing the view. The drone diverts a little power to its processing equipment. Tiny fans in its intake valves spin into action, and a portion of the gas is sucked in. The drone doesn't analyze it, nor use it in any way; it simply ejects it again. Intake, eject. Intake, eject. Inhale, exhale. Its lights flicker in a quick smile.
The drone doesn't spend too much time in that room. It can feel the gas settling on its outer surface, and it doesn't want everything to get clogged up. There's a box nearby containing bottles of various sizes. It flies head-first into those, breaking them, and grinds its carapace into the resulting puddle. The glass doesn't scratch it, nor does the mixture of acids it's rolling in, and eventually the drone is left covered in a sticky substance that protets it from the gas. Its body trails tiny filaments that have hardened in contact with the air, like hairs on a corpse.
The drone tries to remember a time where its mind wasn't on fire, a jumbled mess of half-thoughts, conflicting sensory inputs and endless loops of noise and electrical static. Every time it shuts down and begins again, it hopes that things will be put right. Every time.
It flies close to the ground to avoid accumulating too much of the gas. On its way through, it bumps into an inert body. It stops, thinks, then extends its feelers and grabs hold of the white lab suit in which the body is clad. It pulls. The robe shifts a little, but no more. It pulls harder. The robe shifts more, but so does the body.
The drone tires of this. A tiny hole opens just below its eyes, and a laser beam briefly shines through. There is a wet sound, and a burning smell.
The drone pulls again. This time, the robe comes off.
It flies through the second room. Once it's out, it uses the robe to wipe the accumulated patina off its body. It inspects the crud: it's a white, thick but slightly frothy material. The drone allows itself a brief moment of chemical analysis, and sees that the stuff is called Vernicium. It's a byproduct of various chemical processes, and rather destructive to human skin but perfectly safe to metal.
A scream from the gas room startles the drone into action: it turns immediately and fires the laser randomly into the murky cloud. There is a thump.
The drone hovers for a moment, then turns again and keeps on going, into the third room. It decides to start powering up all its internal operations, its metal organs.
***
All senses are now working, some of them a little too well. Tiny drops of oil start accumulating on the drone's carapace, trickling into the hairline cracks that circumscribe its optic cameras. The drone turns its internal thermostat up to the maximum it can stand, and its outer surface burns off both the oil and the chemical filaments accumulated in the last room. The filaments fall off and land in a heap on the floor.
It tests the other senses. It can detect the gaseous traces coming from the other room. Good. Zoom and unzoom works as well; it can count the ridges in a pen that's lying on the floor. It can sense audio waves as well.
It picks up one now. Coming from a nearby cupboard.
The drone turns and slowly flies in the direction of that cupboard.
The sound from the other side is quiet, very quiet. It's someone breathing, in a staccato rhythm.
Gently, the drone nudges open the cupboard door. Inside, it sees a young woman, dressed in a lab coat. The woman's eyes are red-rimmed, and she's mouthing silent words.
The drone hums with something resembling pleasure. It revolves silently in the air so that its head faces downwards. Its feelers shoot out like pythons and fasten the woman to the wall by her head and shoulders. Two pairs of feelers clamp on to her jaw and pry it open.
The drone has been trying to fix itself, trying to re-make itself into an undamaged creature. But it has been running out of hosts.
Now it has found one.
And her face is open to let it in, to let it be born again.
- Sit down, please.
***
He's sitting on his bed, head in hands. All bravado has gone out of him. His hands, now rubbing his eyes, don't feel like they belong to him anymore. They feel like ghosts, attached to him by some strange mechanism he has no control over.
He doesn't want to look up, because he'll see the pictures on the walls – of loved ones lost, of glories past – and he will remember how alone he is. There's a certificate there, too, somewhere, for working in deep-space environments. He worked as a miner on asteroids, an incredibly dangerous task that paid well. The men in his family worked in the same way, and most of them have died. He's the last one, of the men, of the family, of everything. And soon, he’ll be gone as well.
And yet ... and yet he knows that it doesn't matter, if he'll only allow his grief to fall away like the old skin it is. He doesn't want to take his mind off it, because that'll only mean he's running away. Instead, he focuses; he gazes inward with a burning stare, willing himself to look his fate directly in the eye. He doesn't blink. He doesn't blink.
After a while, he feels something give way under the force of his stare, and his mood shifts from victimization to purpose. He accepts the joke of life. He feels the sorrow lift from him. He begins to feel that nothing is impossible.
He starts browsing through pamphlets.
Instant response to most of them is to toss them in the garbage. There's nothing they can do for him that'll change things, nothing they can tell him that he doesn't already know.
When he gets to the card from the Sisters, he almost throws it away like everything else. Then he notices what the card actually says.
The card has a phone number, and below that, the line, "This is not what you think."
He frowns, and calls the number. When a voice answers, it asks him how he got the contact info.
He's silent for a little while. The voice waits patiently. Then he starts telling it who he is and what has happened.
***
The voice came from a TV box. There was an avatar on the screen: his AI doctor. You didn't get a human doctor unless you were a pilot, or willing to pay an exorbitant fee.
- We've received the results of the blood test, the voice said. The avatar moved its lips in sync with the words, and didn't smile. That's when he knew it was serious.
***
He meets the Sister at a café. Over a cup of tea, she makes him an offer.
"The doctors are reliable," she says, stirring the tea with a spoon that she then sets aside. "They only give that card to people whose entire profiles - psych, medical, economy, everything - match what we're looking for. So we know you're right for us."
"And now I need to know whether you're right for me," he replies, and sips his coffee.
"Precisely," she says, and pulls out some boxes from her bag. They're each the size of a fist, identical, made of marble. "What I'm about to tell you might sound incredible," she continues, "but you'll need to take a lot of things on faith from now on. There are forces in this universe. Some of them good, some evil. Occult, even. And one of those forces, an evil one, is attempting to disrupt various spiritual lines, to influence the world in various ways. The Sisters have set up a task force to uproot it."
He stares her directly in the eye. "I don't believe you," he says. "Actually, I think you're crazy, and those boxes probably contain the eyeballs of your past victims or something."
She suppresses a grin and orders the boxes in front of him, three in a line. "Pick one."
He does. She opens it. The box contains a small marble, purple and opaque. The instant he sees it, he's flooded with a sense of well-being. Worries melt away, acceptance and joy light up inside of him, and the future, bleak as it is, seems like the best thing that could happen to him.
She closes the box, and the feeling fades away. She opens the other two boxes; they're empty.
"Very few people respond," she says. "But I saw that you did. You're attuned to them, which means you can find them."
"What do you want me to do?" he asks.
"Look away," she says. He does, and hears her re-order the boxes. Eventually he looks back, points at one box, and it contains the marble. They do this several times, and he always picks the right box. Every time it's opened, it makes him feel alive and happy. Yet when it's closed he doesn't need more; he's content with that brief glimpse. He mentions this to the Sister, and she nods, clearly pleased.
"I don't know what you saw," she says, "because it's different for everyone. I see snowflakes, gently drifting about inside the boxes. Other people see colours, and others can only tell by feel. Your mind picks whatever you can handle.
"I want you to leave your life," she says. "Come with us. Help put things right. There aren't many people who can do what we're asking you to do."
He's still not sure. Then again, he thinks, what does he have to lose?
***
- The results are not good. I'm sorry, the AI said.
He knew it wasn't sorry, that it was a liar. But he'd known that for a while now, and he accepted its preprogrammed response as a small comfort.
***
He's aboard the Sisters' ship. They're in high sec space, scanning for something. He's started to feel the pangs of impatience but he pushes them down. It's true that he doesn't have any time to waste, but all that means is that a second spent on aggravation is a second wasted. He looks around, tries to take everything in as if for the first time. The metal walls and railings, the lights in the ceiling, the muted greys and greens worn by people around him. It's all rather low-key and subdued, and yet it's perfect, if only because it is.
There's a shout, and the crew erupts in cheers. They've found a marker.
***
He sat there stunned as the AI told him he had somewhere between six and eighteen standard months to live. It was nothing they could prevent; at some point the brain would simply stop sending the commands for lungs to inflate and heart to contract. His mind would decide it was time to stop. There had been some limited experiments with automatic equipment, a type of pacemaker, but in order for it to work he couldn't exert himself under any circumstance, nor meditate or relax. Never drink, never do anything that might cause any sort of deviation from the norm. Never watch movies, never fall in love. Nothing.
-It's a choice between living and dying, the AI said, and he understood.
***
The ship destroys every pirate it finds at the location, and its sensors pick up a trail. The Sister in charge, the same one who recruited him, is very pleased. "It's not always that we find it," she says, "and even then, we have no idea whether it'll lead us to the right spot."
They move on.
***
- There is a chance you might live longer. The six to eighteen months is a mean time; there is nothing except the basic laws of probability that says you couldn't live a full life.
He thought about this.
- So I might die in ten years? he asked.
- Yes.
- Or I might die tomorrow, he said.
- Yes.
The AI watched him for a moment, then said, but chances are it will be within a year and a half.
He didn't ask how many had lived past that. He didn't want to know.
***
They've been through two more encounters. At least they've been lucky enough to find trails leading them deeper in. The Sister told him that sometimes the trail would grow cold and they'd have to go back to square one.
They're chatting busily while strapped into their seats, waiting for the pilot to finish off the last pirate. Remaining unfettered in the middle of combat is just asking for a broken neck. The crew members to either side of him are arguing about whether this is the second or third encounter, one claiming that the first one shouldn't count, the other that it should. It's an utterly pointless argument, and he understands it so well. Anything to keep their minds off the fact that they could die at any moment, either burned to a crisp or flash-frozen in space, their eyes bursting out of their heads.
There is a resounding boom as the last pirate is blown to shreds, then silence.
Speakers crackle. "This is it, folks. We've found the trail again, and this time it looks like the mother lode."
With bated breaths, they course toward their fate.
***
And then, with no forewarning, he started to laugh.
The AI was flummoxed.
- Do you need me to turn off for a moment?
- No, he said, still laughing.
He knew it wasn't shock, at least not completely. It was acceptance, and it had hit him like a hammer.
- Everything is clear now, he said. All the rules have been changed. The grand joke has come to its punchline at last.
The AI remained silent, though he didn't know if it was out of respect for the dead, or merely because it had no routines to deal with this sort of reaction.
- Everything is clear, he repeated. I only had one relative, you know.
- I know, said the AI.
- My grandmother. She died last year. I always admired her strength, her will to live in the moment, the simplicity she saw in things. I always tried to pare down my life to match that, cutting away the complexities. But that's just not something you can do. You can't ignore everything and force yourself to think simple.
He was babbling now, but he couldn't imagine stopping.
- True simplicity and purity of purpose comes only when you've faced all the complexities, and lived through them long enough – and deep enough – that you come through them, as if breaking through a barrier, and right out the other side.
- And you've broken through a barrier? the AI asked.
- I have now. You achieve simplicity not by keeping complexity away, but by embracing it, gladly giving yourself over to the torrents of life, and, laughing, realizing that it's all insignificant and that it holds no power over you, that life is one big joke with our death as the punchline and that no matter whether you find the joke funny or not it'll still be spoken right to the end, and that is the heart of humour and joy.
He stopped, almost gasping for breath. The AI stared at him.
- Would you like some pamphlets? it said at last.
***
"Deploy! Deploy! Go, go, go!"
They pour out, like blood spurting from a wound. Drones whizz past them in a battle frenzy. The pilot is keeping the pirates busy, keeping all attention focused on him.
They were all hand-picked by Sisters operatives. Every one of them immediately zeroes in on the same broken-down husk. It looks the same as the myriad other wrecks floating about, but they know better.
He's the first to reach it. It wouldn't show up on any scanner, that much is certain. It's a spherical thing, purple and opaque like the marble he saw, and surprisingly inert. Even when it's unconnected to anything, it doesn't seem to want to move. It takes three of them to pry it loose, and when they do, it feels like taking a splinter out of bare skin, like removing a thorn from the Lord's eye.
The sphere calls to him, but the happiness it promises is laced with confusion, and he senses undercurrents of doubt and madness. He ignores its call the best he can, and focuses on getting the thing back to the ship. The Sisters have told him that the sphere will be purified.
Instinctively, he knows that the item's placement here was intended to call hapless travelers, make this place into a death trap. But there's more at play than that. It feels like they've stumbled onto a dark tapestry, and managed to cut away one of the threads.
He looks at his hands. They're shaking from the strain of removing the sphere. And they feel a part of him now.
Inside his suit, he smiles.
***
He accepted the pamphlets with good grace, got up, and walked quietly out of the office, heading towards his life.
Cold Wind was before and will be after, the first of the Winds to blow among the Kaalakiota Peaks and the one that loves things that grow strong. He saw the Raata men arrive and blew his welcome among the kresh trees.
He asked Wind-from-the-West about these men, and Wind-from-the-West told him tales of fires and blood and burning. But the Raata men respected the woods, the stones and the water, and Cold Wind felt happy to share his tales with them.
He blew for many autumns among the Raata. He blew for many autumns until Deteaas heard him and made a flute with the bamboos, and K’vire heard him and made a harp from his bow, and they taught the other men to listen.
Cold Wind told them what moons bring snows and rains, the time of the trees and the hunt, and which herbs are good to eat. The Raata listened and learned, and the wisdom from the tales made them grow strong.
Other men arrived, this time from the West, and Cold Wind once again felt happy. Yet these other men brought the fire Wind-from-the-West spoke of, and the blood and the burning. They tore stones to build walls and trees to make pikes. They killed all those that were different, and claimed all these lands and waters for themselves.
K’vire was fast and strong. Cold Wind taught him the words that make the bow stronger and make the arrow fly true. He taught him to move without sound or track, and to perceive the paths that are hidden.
Deteaas was calm and deep. Cold Wind taught him the words that sing the deeds of heroes fallen in battle and instill fire in the heart of men. He taught him when to run and when to walk, when to wait and when to strike.
The pikes of the men from the West could only find shadows that vanished before they could land a blow. Arrows coming from nowhere took first this one, then another, and another. Their sky was always covered with dark clouds; they could see the sun and stars no more. The orders their captains yelled were lost in the Wind that day and night kept screaming in their ears.
The men from the West felt fear creep into their heart. Some left, then others followed, then all the rest of them.
The Raata men rejoiced and celebrated their victory, and sang praises to their Cold Wind. He smiled and laughed, for Winds need no praise from men, and said:
“Many are the men, and many are their stories. Those who have the courage among you, travel far away from the Kaalakiota Peaks, travel to other men and other Winds. Haakkin k’len! Return when you have walked all the Lands, and when you have heard all the Tales.”
K’vire was fast and strong; his eyes filled with distant lands, he dashed to the North.
Deteaas was calm and deep; his dreams filled with distant tales, he walked to the East.
---
No man was stronger than K’vire; in time he forgot to walk and started to lead, and the northern Fuukiuye tribes followed him. None could match Deteaas’ wisdom; soon he forgot to listen and started to speak, and the eastern Oryioni people answered his call. When for the third time the son of the son became father, seventeen houses of Fuukiuye went back South, and twenty-three houses of Oryioni returned to the West.
They found each other under the Kaalakiota Peaks. Time had diluted their memory; they saw the other faces were strange, the Houses’ symbols different. Each claimed these woods and waters as true heirs.
And both refused to leave.
In the first cold dawn of autumn two armies stood face to face, one arrowshot apart. Light snow made silence thick. Men stared men. An eagle cried, and two armies shouted in rage and clashed.
The Winds saw the battle and whispered to the men to stop. Wind-of-the-West lifted the fallen snow and tried to hide one army from the other, but men were already blind with anger and fog would not stop them slicing anything that moved. Mountain Wind brought the cool of the high Peaks into the heart of the fight, yet fury was boiling in every vein and cold would not placate them.
One third of the men fell, then another third. When only a fifth was still standing, Cold Wind felt his pain burn into fury as he had not known before.
“This,” he roared, “ends now!”
Blizzard and ice he spewed until no hand could hold a weapon; until friend and foe lumped blind together, seeking protection from his rage. He blew until none could stand, until every man still alive was left clinging desperately to the last thread of warmth.
Wind-of-the-West lifted the fog. “Forgive these men,” he said, “they were blind, but now they will see.” Storm Wind uncovered the sky. “Spare their lives,” he said, “you have already extinguished their anger.”
Cold Wind let his fury vanish and released his grip, and men could feel their limbs again.
“Look at each other,” he told them. “How do you tell one man from the other? How do you know which man to kill?”
The men struggled to stand up and looked at their armors; the symbols of their Houses were torn and broken, not visible anymore.
“No two men on this field have the same face, but can you tell them apart now?”
The men gazed at each other trying to distinguish brothers from enemies, yet the blood covering their faces made all of them alike.
Cold Wind whispered: “Remember this. Trust your eyes, you will kill each other. Trust your veins, you can all go home in peace.”
The seventeen and twenty-three houses became forty. K’vire and Deteaas became Raata again.
---
From”Two Bloodlines, one Race: the Raata spirit in the Deteis and Civire soul”, Lai Dai Press, YR87. Reprinted with permission.
"Well, Mr. I-don't-think-anything-can-be-more-beautiful-than-an-oversized-chunk-of-rock-because- I've-never-been-off-Intaki, what do you think?
Mon Dieu, man, pick your jaw up off of the floor, at least. Drool is hard to get off of a carpet.
Heh heh. Yes, the Crystal Boulevard is indeed impressive. You really haven't seen wonder until you've seen an entire street - buildings, roads, lamps and all - made out of clear crystal. This is a view I have trouble getting tired of.
Not all of it's the same, you realize, of course. The buildings and lots change hands constantly, so they have to be made of something fairly cheap that still sparkles in the sun. Usually glass, and some of the cheaper places have actually started using clear polymers in buildings. Completely ruins the ambiance, as far as I'm concerned. Plastic doesn't gleam like crystal does.
A few of the richer, better established places are pure crystal, though. Take the Glittering Dream nightclub, for instance. It's not only made completely - inside and out - of the clearest crystal you can find, it was grown on the spot. They used some of the most advanced shaped crystal growth techniques in the universe to shape that place just how they wanted - that's why it looks like a triple helix. The owner wanted to make a statement about the building blocks of life being built out of the building blocks of planets or something or other. Why a triple helix, you ask? To be different, mostly, I think.
That does sum up the whole Federation in a nutshell, doesn't it? Being different. Walk down the street of any town on any modern Federation planet and you'll see a thousand different fashions all walking past each other. Some calm, some loud, some downright perverse (ever hear of a place called the Caduceus, on Sovicou? Eugh, don't ask, you don't really want to know). Each and every one of us tries to seize individuality as hard as we can. It's what's made the Federation the wonderful mess of a melting pot it is today.
Damned odd thing about it is, though, it's also what makes us the strongest society in the universe. What do I mean? Well...
Take another look at the Boulevard. Ignore the buildings, look down at the road. Pretty, eh? Cobblestoned, but it's all still clear and gleams like nothing else, not even the best buildings? And it seems bottomless, right? There's a reason for that. The "cobblestones" are just decoration, carved into the surface. The street itself seems bottomless, but it really goes down for twenty meters. You see, the Boulevard itself - the road, and the foundations of all the buildings for about a block all around - is one solid chunk of diamond. Manufactured diamond, but still as hard as the real thing. Five square hundred-meter blocks laid in a row, each twenty meters deep, and the hardest material in the known universe. And for eighty meters beneath that, it's layers of plates of latticed crystal-carbonate-nanofiber armor - the same stuff used in the most elite of military starships. The Boulevard is really the shield for the security bunkers of the three governmental branches and the Military Command in case of planetary bombardment - you can shoot a shell from a thousand-millimeter kinetic accelerator from orbit onto the Boulevard and not achieve a breach through the individual blocks. And even when the diamond shield does break, then you have to go through the layered carbonate-nanofiber armor, and you still have chunks of diamond to get through, which makes any shot bounce and lose force. Nuclear weapons'll do nothing to the topshield - it's already been heated and compressed, after all - and it's heavily faceted in layers so shooting it with lasers from orbit is totally pointless. Never mind the heatsinks, in any case - they bleed off excess heat into the surrounding earth, so you'd have to direct enough firepower onto the Boulevard to turn half the district into molten slag to get through. Only direct-contact antimatter bombs could do the job, and even then it'd need enough antimatter blasts to end up destroying most of the Caille city district in the process. Essentially, you can't get to the bunkers without laying waste to the entire city, and generally invaders who want territory want to try and keep urban centers as intact as possible.
The Ultra-Nationalists came up with the idea, of course (who else would?), during the early days of the Caldari War. They were afraid the Caldari might try and pull something exactly like Tovil-Toba ended up doing, and so decided to spend a ridiculous sum of money on the safest command bunker money could buy. One of them was sharp enough to realize that the project could pay for itself with a bit of deft positioning, though, and suggested putting civilian structures on top of the diamond shield. Even after the UNats were deservedly kicked from office, Tovil-Toba managed to convince just about anyone in office that the UNats might have been on to something concerning a super-fortified bunker for the government in case of concentrated planetary assault. So the thing was built, and the government rented space on top of it to whoever wanted it. They made back the expense in 20 years and have been raking in profit ever since.
Heh. I can see you're getting tired of the allegories, so I'll get down to it: the Federation, for all of its wild diversity, is a lot stronger than it looks. Any citizen with half a brain can understand that the freedoms that let us wear translucent clothing aren't exactly looked on favorably elsewhere. (I'll admit not everyone has that much of a brain, and again, you want examples, head for Sovicou... or better yet, don't.) They understand that, despite how different we all are, what we have collectively is worth defending. Get a Gallentean angry about his freedom or the freedom of someone he knows and he'll be ready to fight to the death and further. Sure, some folks might be "armchair activists" about Amarrian slavery... that's not what I'm talking about. The Minmatar aren't "our people", or at least the Republic ones aren't. It's one thing to protest something happening many light-years away. But the Amarrians never made more than probing slave raids into the Federation, and you know why? They immediately realized that they'd never be able to enslave us, not without slaughtering most of us. Even if they did get people off of the streets of Luminaire, or Intaki, or Daasa, or Sovicou, or wherever, we'd fight them to the absolute end. Beneath all of our differences there's a single bond between every living Gallentean that makes us hard as diamond: a love of freedom.
And yeah, that's your answer, after a fashion. I figured you were here for my reaction to Kataphraktur's comments about Gallente-Amarr relations. Soon as I heard them I knew a reporter would be here, although I wasn't sure if they'd send you. I brought you up here so you'd understand the reason behind the answer I'm going to give.
And the answer is: I agree. Sooner or later, the Federation and the Empire have to beat the ever-loving shit out of each other and only one will rise from the carnage. One of us surrenders individual freedom for a universal human mission, and the other allows each person to define his own mission. In the end, the two can't co-exist; they're polar opposites, and they'll clash eventually. I respectfully disagree with the good Holder as to who'll win, but he's got the right of it; no matter how long we put it off, it's got to end in blood.
And I just hope to the Gods that we win. If the Amarrians take over the galaxy, we'll never get out of the resulting dark age.
Anyway... enough worrying about the Amarrians, eh? Come on, let's head for the top bar of the Glittering Dream. If you think this view is something, you haven't seen anything yet.
Oh? What's that? Wondering why anyone would ever want to walk onto the Crystal Boulevard, knowing what it really is?...
Well. It's like I said earlier. If you were an invading army, and you wanted to take the planet, would you want to destroy a national treasure, frequented by the citizenry, and be forced to destroy the entire city along with it, just to get at the leadership?...
Now come on. They've got this drink you've just got to try. Quafe, I think it's called..."
- comments made by Duran Ricard, 6th Federal Ambassador to the Amarrian Empire, to a now-forgotten reporter of Intaki descent, 60 years ago.
"These are not the hands of a killer."
And they weren’t. Manicured to mechanical perfection, the nails polished immaculately, cut short at exactly two millimeters past the tip of the finger. Fingers that were slender, as far as male fingers can be. The wrinkles at the joints stood out, the only ones of their kind to be found on these hands. The skin itself was pale but smooth, like silk. Golden lines occasionally sparked underneath it like archaically patterned circuitry, as if to accentuate his choice of words. As he toyed absent-mindedly with the object he was holding, glimpses of his palms revealed that they too were soft, betraying a life free of the coarser obligations. He spoke again.
"Yet, we both know that I am. I have seen lives ended at the hands of enraged cattle, good people’s shells stripped apart by inelegant tools of destruction. I have in turn killed this cattle, throwing their lifeless husks to the hungry void. I have fought enemies sheltered by walls they thought would keep them safe. I have imagined their screams in my mind. My lasers danced across their unshielded armor-stripped hulls exposing empty interiors to space and I smiled as they died."
"This is what you’ll face. Madmen locked inside capsules, squandering lives as if they were nothing. When you are up there you are a tool, nothing more. A slave to the will of a pilot, bound to a man immortal until his mind can no longer be cloned."
"Mankind has taken to the stars and destruction has followed in its wake. Demigods patrol the lifeless expanse above, and they don’t care about you. We are pilots. We control your destiny. When you are gone, we will live and we know this."
"These are not the hands of a killer," he said, looking squarely into the eyes of the young man across from him, "but this is the face of one."
"Think carefully before you answer. If you decide to rise above your world and begin life among the stars, you will be nothing. You will be a drone in the hive of an insane Queen, existing solely to provide the ship with needs, links in a chain too complicated for you to understand. You will live this ungrateful life until the day you too will be floating, frozen, between distant suns."
The words were true, Daren knew that much. But his long-standing dream, of rising through the ranks aboard a battleship-class vessel - perhaps making it to Engineer, or even Chief Engineer - was all-consuming. He could not resist. The workers at the ground-docks had pointed him to a capsule-cleared pilot only after three months of harsh, unremitting labour. A conspiracy of fate and hard work had permitted him to meet with this Amarrian, who had needed but a brief look at him to know his aspirations.
Taking a deep breath, Daren nodded and spoke the words that would condemn him: "I understand."
In a fluid gesture, the pilot across from him slid the datapad he was holding across the table.
"Press your thumb on the pad and slide your IDImplant over the dotted line. Transfer will be booked. Keep the pad with you, it’s your pass to my docks. Report to the quartermaster there; he will roster you in, arrange a bunk for you and explain to you your duties. Work hard and you’ll be rewarded. There’s no place for slackers on my decks."
"Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have business deals to conclude."
Nodding his agreement, the young man left the table. Stunned, he made his way out of the establishment, holding the datapad tightly, as if his life depended on it.
Four months later, Daren Athaksis was confirmed as one of six-thousand three-hundred and fourteen reported casualties resulting from the destruction of the Apocalypse-class battleship "Dam-Imud." His post was filled within three days. His family was not notified.
The poignant tale of the Outcast is a stark reminder that no one people in the pocket universe of New Eden are without sin or blame. Even the Minmatar, beleaguered underdogs of the four great nations and subjects of many a Gallente charity drive or human rights protest, have their own shameful taint, which they above all are reluctant to admit or acknowledge.
Still deeply rooted in tribal folklore and steeped in tradition, the Minmatar often attract scorn for the seemingly barbaric rituals they cling on to; the Voluval, that most integral of ceremonies, chief among them. While it is clearly the most influential and important ritual to a young Matari, it carries with it a terrible burden often swept under the carpet by shamans and spokesmen of the tribal faith. After all, if the fact that those who would fight most fiercely for freedom, would also readily oppress a fragment of their own populace, became known to the public at large – it would surely cut the legs out from under any lucrative charity effort.
The broken shield, the pale eye, the Slaver’s fang. These dread markings, while thankfully rare, are an inevitable by-product of the unpredictable genetic lottery involved in the marking ritual. Some force a Voluval subject into a self-imposed lifetime vow of silence under the penalty of having his tongue cut out by his kin should he or she ever break it – others, like the dreaded pale eye, condemn the unfortunate young tribesman to exile, though exile is usually the path chosen by those cursed by a foul tattoo regardless of the penalty it carries. What precisely happens to these tormented children of rage is known by few, and spoken of by fewer – even the liberal Gallenteans, always eager for a good cause to leap upon like lampreys and saturate their media with, have never heard of Vo’shun.
Vo’shun, or ‘Hidden Hope’, lies on the devastated homeworld of the extinct Starkmanir tribe, once called Starkman Prime but now largely forgotten. It is a sprawling complex of rust and girder, a veritable shanty-town of interconnected, self-contained habitat modules built in a man-made geological feature known as Sorrow’s Gash – man-made, because four hundred years prior, an Amarr orbital bombardment fleet gored this hundred mile canyon in the face of Starkman Prime’s largest continent with their ravening tachyon siege lasers. There, among smouldering sulphur volcanoes, surfing a fractured tectonic plate, dwells the only sanctuary the Outcast can call home.
There is but one law in Vo’shun: no one is turned away. Ruled entirely by tribal law adapted and modified from Minmatar folklore, the colony is a mishmash of utter savagery and social enlightenment the Republic quietly envies. Murder is more than common, suicide is rampant, but above all the people of Vo’shun know freedom. Those stained with the Slaver’s fang can sing war songs rather than be condemned to a lifetime of silence; those marked with the pale eye can live among kin.
The Sisters of Eve attempt regular clandestine aid shipments to Hidden Hope, which exists in a state of near-poverty. Due to Starkman Prime’s location in the Arzad system – a disputed border zone between the Minmatar and the Amarr – many of these shipments are interdicted, which in turn forces the Outcast to turn to piracy. While the Amarr Navy is brutally efficient at curbing Outcast raids, the only reasons the Empire has not allowed slave raiders to invade Vo’shun, is an eagerly perpetuated and not altogether false rumour that the colony is rife with communicable diseases that render its populace unsuitable for enslavement – and, unbeknownst to the bedraggled citizens of Hidden Hope, a curious edict put into law by Idonis Ardishapur himself, whose royal family has domain over Starkman Prime. Enacted shortly after Ardishapur scouts stumbled upon Vo’shun a mere decade ago, the edict, not widely publicized or even understood by imperial lawyers – yet tacitly enforced nonetheless – states unconditionally that no further harm shall directly befall this shattered world.
This edict’s name: Khadrea’s Law.
Today, millions of people have permanent residences within space stations, starships and other celestial installations. Space-related industries are experiencing such exponential growth that planetside economies can scarcely keep up, to the point that some semi-independent colonies within the Gallentean Federation have decided to tie their currency directly to the Concord-regulated ISK. Indeed, space plays such a large role in the economic reality of today, that most people fail to realize that until just two centuries ago, space was off-limits to all but the richest individuals.
One of the main obstacles towards the initial commercialisation of space turned out to be one of the most resilient hurdles space exploration has yet encountered, namely the need for cheap and reliable transportation of goods between the planets themselves and space-based platforms. In order to make space viable as an extension to planetside economies, they first had to find a way to easily transport both raw materials and finished goods to and from the planets. Up to that point a myriad of wildly different approaches had been attempted by various interest groups and national entities, ranging from simple rocket deployment to more outlandish ideas involving gigantic railguns. Almost all were eventually rejected for a single reason; none of them could field the kind of volume necessary to fully interest potential investors.
In the end, the matter was never fully resolved, and transportation remains a matter of taste. While high-orbit shuttle deployment, where an airborne vehicle gradually clears the atmosphere at low angles, remains the most popular method of both passenger transportation and freight, the fact that many planets have different atmospheric conditions means that they have to be custom-built, resulting in only localized industries. However, the space industry has bypassed this by simply creating a subset economy, where goods are manufactured from materials procured in space, and sold to space-based customers. As a result, there is only minimal interaction between the two when compared to the massive scale of interstellar trading.
‘We found our kin, and found them strange.’
- Rana Arnov. Memoirs
Two hundred golden, gleaming hulls, gathered on the fringes of the Vak’Atioth system. Amarrian arrogance had mandated the use of such a small force. They did not expect resistance.
For the Amarrians, this was to be a great day. It would renew faith in the Reclaiming, a faith much needed. For weeks they had been advertising their intentions to crush the Jovians; flooding communications networks with propaganda proclaiming their people the chosen of God, rightful owners of the Jovian people.
Vak’Atioth was not a primary system within the Jovian Empire. It lay upon the edge and contained only various small research facilities. It was, nonetheless, here that the mighty Amarr Empire had chosen to show the Jovians the undeniable might of their squadron, a force not even approaching the full size of the great Amarr Navy.
The Jovians valued one thing above all else – information. Their need for information had led to the formation of the Jovian intelligence network, an entity with eyes and ears in most Empires’ internal archives. It delivered to the Jovians every plan the Amarrians had laid out for their assault – even before the Amarrian commanders themselves had received the information. This allowed the Jovians to plan extensively for the battle that would take place in one of their own systems – then called Vak’Atioth, now known only as Atioth.
It was a rich and diverse mixture of battleships and cruisers, each ship equipped with state of the art Amarrian laser technology. Their ships were bulky and slow, but made up for their lack of agility with the devastating power of their laser batteries. The fleet organized itself in typical Amarrian military fashion - a staggered line designed to maximize the ghastly effect of tachyon fire against the enemy’s front. Their hulls adorned with religious texts, broadcasting messages of Amarrian supremacy, interspersed with litanies and psalms in honour of the Reclaiming. This was their moment; this was what they lived for.
The first volley of fire erupted from an Apocalypse, its turrets taking aim and firing as one, blood-red beams slicing into the side of a stationary ship until the vessel’s hull ruptured, pieces of it scattering like dust among the rank and file of the Jovian force.
It had begun.
The Jovian forces split into smaller wings, each numbering 5 ships, all equipped with devastating Jovian laser technology. Accelerating with frightening speed, they dove into the Amarrian attack forces. Amarrian cruisers equipped with close-range weaponry moved to intercept as wave after wave of the smaller vessels engaged single targets, like a furious pack of wolves, dodging and weaving, maximizing maneuverability.
And then it happened. Massive, eerily green blasts erupted from seemingly nowhere, and an Amarrian Apocalypse went up in flames. Another blast erupted what seemed mere seconds later, and tore through a squad of Mallers, their hulls briefly flickering with bright green energy discharges.
The Amarrians did not expect this. Their rigid command structure inhibiting communications, they did not realize what was happening. Lack of coherence and interoperability in the fleet meant that they could not cope with the sudden appearance of this unseen terror.
It was a Jovian Mother ship.
Swooping in, the Jove frigate forces caused even more confusion, sending the Amarrian forces into disarray. At this point, communications broke down. Amarrian battle doctrine demanded sacrifice, and so the Navy could not disengage. Captains and their crews valiantly threw down their lives for the Empire, confident that they, God’s chosen, would be victorious. The few that retreated would later be executed for cowardice, their families enslaved and their Houses disbanded.
For hours streams of glaring light lit up the system that night, the nimble Jove frigates diving into the Amarr fleet, their ranged cruisers supporting them with laser-fire over a distance and the titanic Mothership firing blast after blast of its extreme-range weapons; cannons created specifically for this battle. The smaller vessels holding the Jovian line prevented Amarrian squads from coming close enough to fire upon their nemesis, leaving the fleet defenseless against its onslaught.
Battleship after battleship exploded in a violent bursts of light under the attack from the Jovian mother ship. This left the Amarrians in a position they had not been in before – What could they do but press on and die?
Not six hours later Vak’Atioth was overflowing with the remnants of hulls drifting into the emptiness of space. The Jovians had won the first battle of this war; the majority of the Amarrian fleet had been demolished whilst only a third of the Jovians ships had been lost. The Amarr knew they had to respond quickly and in numbers. Publicly, they blamed impetuous leadership for the headlong assault on the Jovians – even if that was exactly what Amarrian battle doctrine had dictated. So it was that captains that had given their lives for their Empire without a single thought of retreat were posthumously discharged from the Navy, their reputations ruined and their families disgraced.
A much larger fleet was ordered to gather in preparation for another assault upon the Jovians. They never got the opportunity to react.
The Matari chose this moment to rebel against their Amarrian masters. Uncannily well equipped for slaves and high on morale, they proved more than a match for their demoralized Amarrian captors. Faced with losing their grip on the Minmatar, the Amarrians had no choice but to redirect their entire military force to the home front to handle the rebelling slaves. To this day, rumours circulate that the Gallentean Federation secretly outfitted the rebels with weapons, ships and supplies.
And thus, a quick and hasty peace was agreed upon with the Jovians; if only to allow the Amarrians to concentrate on themselves. The Amarrians agreed not to attack the Jovians again. Both sides knew this was not sincere. However, the Jovians were happy to settle and continue as they were. To them, the complexities of the barbaric Amarrian nature were of interest only in the academic sense. Their handling of the Amarrian fleet blessed them with the reputation of an entity not to be tangled with.
No-one has attacked the Jovians since.
His upper lip was sweating again.
Throughout the academy years, through his stint with the Legion, through every shady encounter and back-handed double-deal, Monk Dubois had been haunted by the vagaries of his nervous system. He could wrest all the conviction in the world out of his voice, jump into whatever role was required with chameleon-like aplomb, talk his way into the record books and hatch plots with a winner’s smile, but always his body screamed chemical murder, tendrils of bridled conscience playing havoc with his processes. Many a time had a rogue twitch or a freak stutter come perilously close to destroying a sweet deal, and more than once they’d sent him scrambling for his life. Fate had seen him through so far, though, and as long as he had fate on his side, he figured, this damnably honest body of his wouldn’t get the best of him yet.
Wiping the sheen off his lip, he waited patiently for the lift to reach Hangar Ingress 3C wherein, suspended in this battered station complex in the middle of nowhere, waited the love of his life, her capacitor humming. Bad Ike’s Rumour – the fastest frigate in this backwater region and then some. He’d held on to her longer than any other ship, and with a little help from old fate they’d seen each other through a lot of tough spots.
Chiming its arrival, the lift opened into the ingress. As he got his first glimpse of the corridor beyond, a twinge of fear-laced anticipation took hold of Monk’s gut. Suppressing thoughts of the enormity of what he was about to do, and the hatred it would inspire in the people he was about to do it to, he steeled himself and marched into the hallway. An Intaki maintenance tech passed him on his way to the Rumour, shuffling along in brooding silence. As they met there was brief and swiftly-averted eye contact, and in the instant it happened Monk felt sure the young man could see right into him.
Maintaining his stride and steadying his breath, he kept walking. Coming to the end of the corridor a few steps later, he keyed in his sequence for Hangar Bay 3C and was admitted to the vast cylindrical space where his ship lay, suspended and motionless. Approaching the bay’s main control panel, he stopped for a moment and wondered how much longer he was going to keep doing this. All those assumed names, all those forged identities, donned and discarded like so many theatre rags, and it all came down to this. After months of planning, of worming his way inside, playing his role to perfection, he now had only to press a few buttons, and in one fell swoop turn himself yet again into the vilest of all things vile.
Every time, Monk had relished this exact moment, this one second where acid-tinged self-loathing mixed with intoxicating joy as he watched the number rise with giddying alacrity, saw his personal account swell with his former compatriots’ hard-gotten gains.
A sound from the ingress corridor brought him out of his reverie. Striding over to the doorway and leaning in, he saw the unmistakable silhouette of the small Intaki in the jumpsuit heading back towards the hangar bay.
Time to work fast, he thought to himself as he ran back to the control panel. Seconds later, the dizzying rush of figures, the pistonic whirr of immense wealth, indicated that his corporation’s accounts were dry. Now, all he had to do was get out of here and he was home free. Discard the fake credentials, hack his registration, chuck the fixer his cut, then spend the next year or two on some paradise world or other before doing it all over again.
He was halfway up the stairs to the capsule landing, musing on the ridiculous ease of the whole thing, when he heard the sound of steps on the main platform below him. Casting a glance over his shoulder, he saw the tech enter the room and, without a moment’s hesitation, stride over to the bay panel and key in a sequence, lightning-fast.
With a low hum, Monk’s pod began to detach from the landing. The bay’s bright lights dimmed to a metallic dusk. Monk could feel the leaden silence descend on him as the near-subsonic warble of the station-wide intercom died abruptly.
He turned on the stairs, ready to put up his most indignant mask for the tech, now a shadowed figure on the platform. Just as he realized, somewhat sheepishly, that the small Intaki couldn’t see his face, he heard the voice:
“Much better. A far more peaceful environment to work in.”
The last word had scarcely fallen when Monk heard a low clap and felt his knees buckle like jelly. As he tumbled down the stairs onto the platform, the crazed thought came to him that finally, fate had decided to tip the scales out of his favor.
He landed in a crumpled heap on the platform, one leg twisted unnaturally beneath him. The tech was already by the main control panel, fingers working with an almost supernaturally assured swiftness.
“Wha—who…” began Monk.
“Quiet,” said the Intaki matter-of-factly, finishing up his keystroke sequence. He took the parapistol from his jumpsuit pocket and turned to face Monk again. Setting down on one knee, gun cocked inches from the terrified man’s face, he began to speak in calm, measured tones.
“Mr. Dubois, your funds have been wired through an easily traceable route to a corporation with competing interests to your own. When discovered here, you will confess to being an agent of theirs, working to undermine your current associates’ position on your real employer’s behalf.” The easy command of his tone somehow managed to convey unspoken threats that sent Monk’s gut whirling.
“Events should unfold within the next two days that will give you ample opportunity to escape the associates you so callously betrayed – after, of course, they have meted out whatever punishment they see fit.” A hint of a smile played at his thin lips.
“Why? Why do this?” asked Monk, bewildered, after a few seconds had passed in silence.
“Consider it your price, Mr. Dubois – your karmic price, if you will. And be grateful that you’re playing a role, however inconsequential, in something that goes beyond yourself. A month from now, should you still be alive, you’ll be able to look back and see the little mark you’ve made on history. All told, I’d say I’m doing you a favor. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s more than any corp thief deserves.”
As he had spoken the words the small man had stood up, pocketed his pistol once more, and, with another rapid-fire keystroke sequence, set the hangar bay to its regular configuration.
As he passed wordlessly through the doorway back to the ingress, Monk caught sight of his name tag: N LEUTRE.
A screaming express of neural connections blazed its way to the forefront of his consciousness, memories of legendary tales told through whispered voices in smokey smuggler dives congealing in his mind.
Niques Leutre. Aeron Assis. The Broker.
Cold sweat didn’t begin to describe it.
In the present day, the Tetrimon are seen as a small fanatical religious cult, that have been responsible for a number of disturbing terrorist attacks against targets both amarr and foreigners.
The truth of the matter is something that the Amarr heirarchy would rather forget.
The roots of the cult lie in the year 21460, at the end of the reign of Zaragram Ardishapur II, also known as the "Mad Emperor." At that time the Amarr Emperor was the leader of the Apostles, the first among equals, and his authority was channeled through the Apostle Council. But as soon as he came into power Zaragram started issuing decrees, most of them religious in nature. Many of these decrees directly contradicted the Scriptures, uprooting and eradicating many of the most sacred traditions of Amarr society. Zaragram gave himself the status of a God-Emperor, and ruled the Empire according to his whims.
One nobleman of the Ardishapur family grew so ashamed of what his own grandfather had done to the traditions and religion of the Amarr that he entered the "City of God" in the Shastal system, and with his own hand killed the Emperor. Before the nobleman was cut down by the surrounding guards, he raised his bloody hand and cried "a manu dei e tet rimon " - I am the devoted hand of the divine god. ("Tetrimon" means "Divine Devotion")
The Council of Apostles, the rightful ruling agency of the Amarrians, took back their former power, and attempted to restore the Ammarian faith. The nobleman was beatified as Saint Tetrimon, and the Council of Apostles took heed of his actions, and created an Order to reverse the corrupting influence of the now deceased Emperor Zaragram II - The Order of St Tetrimon.
This Order was given the task of purifying the Amarr faith, of preserving the original scriptures, and of eradicating apocrypha and deuterocanonical chapters (i.e. removing those chapters of the scriptures which disagreed with the "canon" of the Amarr faith, or those chapters which had been added to the scriptures more recently.) The Order went on to ensure that the decrees of Zaragram were reversed. All icons and pictures of him were either destroyed or his face and name scraped out, and his city was laid to waste.
During the moral reforms which took place from 21875 to 21950, the Council of Apostles was stripped of its powers, which were transferred to the Emperor and the newly formed Privy Council. The Emperor was elevated to the status of the Empire’s spiritual and worldly leader. Many of the Apostles’ supporters were strongly reminded of the Mad Emperor Zaragram II some 500 years earlier, but many of those voices were silenced, forever.
One of the nay-sayers was Tetrimon IV, the current grand master of the Order of St Tetrimon. Unlike many, he did not openly defy the Emperor, but instead hid the records and artifacts of the Apostles.
The new Emperor, still insecure in his newly elevated position, gathered those religious leaders supportive of him into a special assembly to create a new canon of scriptures that would increase the moral authority of the Emperor. This assembly became permanent and was named the Theology Council -- defenders of the new religious and political order. Their Inquisitors were much feared throughout the Empire. Under their ruling fist many aspects of the Amarr faith were purged and modified to fit the new political order of the Empire - with the Emperor as the supreme and infallible voice of God.
The Order of St Tetrimon survived in small groups, often finding themselves at odds with the Theology Council and the Privy Council, but still openly carrying out their work of preserving the original liturgical records of the Amarr faith. In 22762, with the breakup of the Empire and the forming of the Khanid Kingdom, the Emperor issued a decree suppressing the Order of St Tetrimon, asserting that he did so to maintain peace and tranquility within the Empire. Tetrimon houses and colleges everywhere were seized by the local authorities. Some Order members were imprisoned; some were driven into exile. The Grand Master of the Order, Lozera Riana, was declared a heretic and imprisoned in the holy city of Dam-Torsad, where he died two years later.
The Order remained active in the Khanid Kingdom where Khanid II, for his own political reasons, would not allow the Imperial decree to take full effect. There were also accusations laid against both the Sarum and Ardishapur families concerning secret support for the Order, but they retained enough power in the Privy Council to ignore these accusations. Over the following years, the Tetrimon were forced to learn to defend their beliefs, and eventually were strong and skilled enough to strike back against those who they felt were corrupting the hearts and minds of the Amarr people. During the slave uprising of 23216, the Tetrimon reappeared in the Amarr Empire in force, and an agreement was reached with Heideran VII, whereby the Order were allowed free passage through the Empire in return for assistance against Minmatar forces. Ships flying Tetrimon colours became much feared by the young Republic Fleet during this time for their fearless attacks and the suicidal fury shown by their pilots.
During the remaining reign of Heideran the Tetrimon were left untouched, on the understanding that they would not attempt to undermine the rule of Heideran. Quit they remained, aside from a few actions taken against the Kor-Azor family -- specifically against the Heir Doriam, who flouted traditions with his releasing of slaves and liberal views.
Keying in the ignition sequence, Hammerhead softly whispered a quick prayer. For a few glorious seconds the Oscillator Capacitor Unit hummed to life.
It all went downhill from there.
Suddenly a groaning sound struck his eardrums. Sighing, he moved closer to the generator in search of the sound’s origin.
“Damn this infernal machine!” he growled. Apparently the generator was producing the sound. Probably not getting enough power. Then, a high pitched whine followed by a grinding sound which came to a crescendo and stopped abruptly. With all these faults, he thought to himself, the Secure Commerce Commission will never approve of this as a trade commodity. The scene vanished as he turned off the simulation and reached for his pack of smokes.
Hammerhead gazed over at his ever-growing inbox while he sparked up. "Star gates offline in Pator, Faulty sentry gun code through Arida, Camera Drones flaking out... it never ends," he mused as the smoke from his cigarette drifted into the air.
Trying to get back on track, he brought up the simulation once more. As he was again running his investigation into why the component constantly broke down at 2500 GHz he thought to himself, “I wonder if I can fit one of these on my Heron... sure would make traveling in less scrupulous areas safer.” Focusing on his diagnostic read-outs, he just couldn’t understand why the component wasn’t receiving enough power. All previous tests had looked promising.
He decided to call it a day on the analysis - after all, there were plenty of other projects to be getting on with. For one, he still had to finish the new neural connector user interface along with his colleague Tom.
Hammerhead dealt with many branches of CONCORD in his day-to-day duties. The Secure Commerce Commission, like many other CONCORD branches, was rife with red tape and bureaucracy, and extremely stringent when it came to authorizing new products as official trade commodities. With such restrictions on the way products were released, he had to stick to a strict timeline that told him when such products could be out on the street.
He opened a sub-space comms channel with Traveler and waited for the transmission to go through.
"What's the word, Hammer? Do we have a winner?" Traveler was a Research and Development agent at Ishukone who was doing work on various projects for pilots. Hammerhead liked working with the R&D agents. They always had new toys for him to play with and they were never in much of a hurry due to the fact they got paid by the hour.
"Sorry, Traveler. I've been running some more simulations and the results just aren't coming back like I hoped. I expect this project to take at least another three solar cycles. The parameters are just wrong and the power supplement is fluctuating continuously instead of streaming smoothly,” Hammerhead replied with a sigh.
"While I’ve got you on the line, I think I've figured out a way to enhance Particle Accelerator efficiency by 20%, but I'm going to need your help getting the SCC to categorize them as marketable."
Hammer sighed to himself and lit another cigarette. It was Monday morning, the start of what looked to be another very long week.
To the Caldari merchants that shuttled between the core systems it was considered a good omen if, on approaching the Iyen-Oursta stargate, they might witness the hypnotic ballet of the Lutins. Some Gallente locals even took to worshipping these strange dancing lights, that would on rare occasions surround an approaching ship like a swarm of angels until the jump to Perimeter was made. The more belligerent of the Amarrian traders meanwhile saw them as mere baubles, strung up in space to calm the women, children and slaves before the warp drive’s wrench pulled them briefly into timeless non-existence.
Rumours had spread across the Border Zone of vengeful ghost drones returning from the climactic battle at Iyen-Oursta, perhaps to enact a haunting toll for the Caldari secession a century previous. Conspiracy theorists, as is their way, held that the spectral phenomenon was evidence of Jove experiments. Ironically, it was the dismissive Amarrians who capitalised most -- on the widening belief among Minmatar slaves that if they witnessed the spectacle of lights, their firstborn son would be blessed with freedom.
Despite the fact that the detour sometimes doubled the length of their journey, slaver vessels would divert through the Gallente Border Zone in the hope that a sighting - staged or otherwise - would serve to quiet an obstreperous cargo. Some slavers lent the spreading belief further credence by freeing the Luti, the children subsequently born of ‘blessed parents’. Others weren’t as compassionate, taking instead to neutering their human cargo, often by furtively poisoning the ceremonial Kapli bread baked in honour of a Lutin blessing.
Whilst a few scientific studies were conducted on the phenomenon (or ‘Iyen Pixies,’ as they became colloquially known), efforts were half-hearted. Welcoming the income afforded by the increased traffic, the Amarr Empire exerted its pressure on the academic community. In the end, even the most inquisitive of academics were dissuaded from seeding their sensor arrays around the increasingly busy node.
Meanwhile, among pockets of forced-migrant Minmatar workers, the legend continues to flourish. Kapli bread is still baked by those hoping for release from captivity across plantations and farms everywhere, and in a quiet corner of San Matar, on the darkest day of the year, the Lutinlir, (‘Festival of lights’) attracts thousands of Luti families now living in the relative freedom of the Ammatar enclave.
Of the widespread theories put forward through the years to explain the fabled Lutins, the one most favoured by the scientific community is that of superheated plasma escaping through poor venting from the stargate itself. It is thought that if approached at the right speed, correct angle and proper warp drive frequency, the vented plasma is attracted away from the jumpgate’s boson sphere and towards the approaching ship. According to the theory, the plasma’s reaction to the ship’s shields is what creates the brief, dazzling and harmless display of multispectral lights.
Over time, perhaps due to the advances jumpgate technology has seen over the years, the number of sightings has dropped considerably. Of the few reports that are made, most are dismissed as elaborate hoaxes. As a consequence, the Iyen-Oursta system has become something of a quiet bypass for traders as opposed to the highway it once was. Still, every once in a while, a hopeful soul may be seen roaming around the gate, wishing for a glimpse of that fabled beauty.
- The Admiral closed the holo-conference connection and glanced out the window. Darkness had fallen and two of New Caldari’s moons had risen.
- “Continue personal journal,” the Admiral said. A small flashing icon appeared in the bottom corner of the holographic display.
- “The divisional leaders’ meeting this evening was productive, not all good news, but productive. STAR is reporting an increase in new pilots coming out of the various academies and an increased workload. I wish the academies would give a bit more real-life training instead of simulations. Piloting a Mammoth in a system with a lower CONCORD presence is much different than racing a souped-up Burst between here and Matigu. STAR needs more personnel to give these new pilots the assistance they need.”
- ‘The Communications Relay Commission is reporting an increase in faster-than-light message traffic. Their fluid routers are handling the load fine, but a slight increase in funding and resources may need to be considered in the near future. Spurious and illegal traffic is declining due to their efforts and some activity has been turned over to the SCC for further action. There are going to be some very annoyed CEOs and CFOs enjoying some time in the penal colonies.”
- There was a knock at the door. The icon on the screen remained steady at the Admiral’s “Pause recording” prompt. “Enter,” the Admiral called out. An aide de camp walked into the room carrying a black striped folder.
- “Sir, AURORA is reporting an increase in Angel Cartel activity in Curse.” The aide passed the folder over to the Admiral to look through. Graphs of souls lost, ships and cargo destroyed, projected economic impact to trade in the region and other information was dispersed through dossiers of Cartel agents, activity reports and intelligence.
- “Forward AURORA’s sanitized findings to DED for action. Make sure the intelligence is clean. We don’t want to lose another AURORA agent. Don’t make the same mistake your predecessor made.” The Admiral handed the folder back.
- “No, Sir! The information will be clean with no possible ties to our sources.” The aide tucked the folder under his arm, saluted and left the room.
- “Resume”
- The record icon on the holo-screen started flashing again. “The boys in the Technology Division want a closer look at the Transcranial Microcontrollers and see if there are any manufacturing ties to the Sansha devices. I have to agree with the Bug Hunters, the Inner Circle made too quick a decision on their usage. The Bug Hunters are also working on some other issues, the notification after a successful jump installed in the last pod flightware upgrade caused some pilots migraines and they got that removed quick enough. They bust some major butt working on these things.”
- The Admiral paused for a moment and rubbed his eyes. The record icon continued to flash next to the clock. “End personal journal, bookmark and close all files, shut down. Time to head home.” The holo-projectors blinked and went dark.
I floated inside my capsule drowsily listening to the artificial hum of space. My STAR frigate, the ISD Banana was floating just outside the docking perimeter the University of Caille station in Bourynes, and I was bored.
After a while I became aware of the small flashing light that signified a new pilot entering the system. "Hmm," I pondered to myself "could this be who I’m waiting for? Aha!" I grinned triumphantly as the pilot's file appeared on my visual. "Graduated this morning. Bingo!" I then ordered my ship's CONCORD issue scanner to lock the pilots capsule signal, and then with a flip of a mental switch... space folded... and my frigate was floating in the University Training Grounds next to the Velator Frigate of a bemused looking young pilot whose image had just appeared on my visual.
"H..hi?" stammered the pilot, "what do you want? How did you do that?” I smiled at the image and vocalized my reply. "Hi there! I’m Captain Rhaegar of CONCORD's Interstellar Services Department. My division, Support, Technology and Resources, or STAR as we generally refer to it, is tasked with greeting pilots who have just received their Pilots License and helping them out if they have any problems. How are you finding solo flight so far?" The young pilot looked relieved. "I thought you might be a University official here to tell me I’d graduated by mistake," he grinned. "I'm doing alright, but the training you get for the license doesn't cover half of what's really out here..."
And so went my morning. I would sit outside the various Universities, Academies and Schools and wait for new Pilots to appear, and then offer to help them find their feet. It had become clear some months earlier that the basic pilot training offered by the four empires was not really sufficient to cover the complexities of a pilot's every day life in New Eden, and so CONCORD had decided to put to use one of its divisions, STAR, which had previously been a kind of Citizen's Advice service. Equipped with state-of-the-art ships, which used a prototype jump engine they were able to travel the galaxy extremely quickly, so whenever a new player graduated, they could be there.
During the afternoon I received an urgent transmission from STAR headquarters in the Polaris system. "We're getting reports of a huge jump gate malfunction in the Yulai system" reported a Lieutenant, "Looks like its gone out of synch, and none of the ships are completing their jumps!" I sighed. It seemed like every time we updated the jump gate software to be more efficient, more gates would malfunction, stranding the pilots in a kind of stasis. The only way to solve the problem, save completely re-starting the gate, was to go to each ship individually and re-program its navigation computer to be in synch with the gate. It could take hours. Thankfully as I arrived in Yulai so did four other members of the team, and we set to work "freeing" the dozens of immobile pilots.
By the time I returned to STAR headquarters I was exhausted, but I still made time to check up on the galactic news before heading to my bed. After all, I had to help the citizens of that same galaxy tomorrow.
Lieutenant Bills abruptly stopped walking, and lowered the datapad. An odd scent wafted from an open door, instantly distracting him. He pushed open the door and edged inside, only to find himself in a poorly-lit storeroom. A small crate stood open, and he reached inside with trepidation. A moment later, he withdrew some of the contents - a darkly-colored cigar.
"Let me light that up for you..." the older man said, as he leaned forward out of a darkened corner, just a few feet away. A small tongue of fire snapped to life, making ominous shadows of crates and containers dance about the dimly lit chamber. The young officer jumped, dropping the datapad to the floor.
Nervously, his gaze worked its way across the cluttered room. "What is this?" He took a breath, and held up his cigar, letting the flame wash over the tip. "Where did these come from?"
"Serpentis. Or at least, somewhere near there." Tarainis leaned back against a crate of holoreels, and took a deep puff off of his own cigar. "Criminals, they may be... but they certainly know how to enjoy the finer things in life."
Bills stared at the old man for a moment, then looked back at his own cigar. "That would make these... well, contraband, wouldn’t it? Won’t we get in trouble if..."
The fellow gave a sly grin. "Don’t let the lack of uniform fool you, egger. I outrank you, and almost everyone else at this station." He blew a smoke ring in Bill’s direction. "Besides, none of this exists."
"Come again?"
"Some of your comrades caught a shipment of boosters coming out of Serp’ Prime." He gestured with his cigar. "These were on board, as well. Not on the cargo manifest, though... they don’t know where they came from, so AURORA got them. They don’t care how we dispose of them, so long as they never see them again." He took a deep puff, and smiled. "So, we’re incinerating them."
The lieutenant nodded slowly. "I’ve seen the name AURORA on memos, but never understood what it meant. What does it stand for?"
"Auxiliary Union for Rallying, Observation, Recording, Analysis."
"Ahh... alright." Bills looked around the room again, for a second, before continuing. "And what does that all mean?"
Tarainis smirked, and reached over to the nearby terminal. The screen flared to life, displaying one of the main thoroughfares of the station. CONCORD officials hurried about, each with their own agenda and purpose.
"We handle the jobs that they don’t. The ones that fall between the cracks." He tapped a bit of ash from the end of his cigar. "We started out as information gatherers, making sure that the right information got to the right people. It was only natural that we become the historians, as well."
He gestured at a neatly-stacked tower of pressure crates. "See those? Data arrays, due to be shipped out to the archives. You would be amazed at what’s in there... Video footage of that battle in Passari. Last night’s Clash match scores. Minutes from the Sanitation Committee meeting".
The younger man coughed, and sat up more attentively. "Why do you need all that junk?"
"You never know what is going to be significant, or to whom. So, we collect it all."
"Doesn’t sound that bad a job," the lieutenant mused. "At least you get to see all kinds of interesting stuff, right? Beats patrolling the inner systems for hours at a time..."
Tarainis shook his head. "That’s what got us in trouble. We were just supposed to move information around, to whom it belonged." He gestured at the viewscreen. "Look at them. They all have a purpose, a job. Try to give them anything even an inch outside of their focus, and they don’t want to know about it. It might as well not exist."
He flipped the viewscreen off, again. "That’s why we got our commission. There can’t be a department to cover everything, so our job is to take up the slack. And you are right... it is a great life. One day I may be following a smuggling trail, and the next officiating a wedding."
The lieutenant smiled and leaned back, taking another puff on his cigar. "I’m in the wrong line of work." He glimpsed at his datapad, and stood up again. "I’m due in Hanger 3. Thanks for the diversion, though."
Tarainis smiled softly, and leaned back into the shadows. "Don’t worry... we’ll be seeing each other again."
The services and routers, albeit owned and run by independent companies, are under constant scrutiny and regulations by a CONCORD sub-committee to enforce both security and privacy in the communications channels and to make sure the companies are correctly rendering the services they claim. The fierce competition on the telecommunication market makes it cheap, efficient and reliable to talk, transfer data and even conduct business for people light-years apart. – Faster than Light Communication
Millions of effulgent bands of light danced in front of his eyes. Every colour in the spectrum was there, outstanding against the pitch-black background. He willed one forward and ran his fingers through it, then reached out to another simultaneously. With a shock, he bent the threads into a single format, the colours turning a subtle yellow for a second at the disturbance.
From the corner of his eye, he detected a small, dark purple strand, and willed himself towards it. He inspected it, ran his fingers through the light and decided to detour it into a dead end. Immediately, three others lunged at him, a glaring red. He quickly bent them together into a single stream, shooing the communications signal into the endless void with a slight wave of his hand. “Try to find that,” he dared with defiant satisfaction.
Outside of the capsule, the hum of the fluid routers gently permeated the otherwise silent relay tower. Housing countless routers, the tower was one of the main backbones of the FTL-communications network owned by several providers and supervised by CONCORD. It was a dark, foreboding complex in the middle of nowhere, closer to Yulai than any other system - though that hardly mattered, considering the distance between them.
There were very few incidents that night. Things went rather smoothly compared to other nights that he had experienced. The specks of colour could literally leap to him. Fast thinking was required, but luckily the implants enhanced his processing speeds to extreme levels.
He was a part of the CRC. Fitted with implants much like the piloting implants used by new academy graduates to pilot their ships, his world was one of ever-changing hues. The devices inserted into his occipital lobe ensured each channel was represented as a spectrum of colours, shot through with tiny incandescent motes of information. The visualisations made it far easier for the brain to process the torrents coursing through the fluid routers. He mused to himself that he couldn’t imagine what it was like to process all this information the old-fashioned way, then plucked a hair-thin strand of green and merged it into a larger existing strand.
When CONCORD assumed jurisdiction over the FTL-networks, they saw that something was needed to vastly improve methods to regulate the information and, thus, the Communication Relay Commission was called into existence. Methods were devised to allow them to survey large quantities of information. Perfection was found in the capsule technology the Jovians had introduced to the galaxy. Fitted with highly advanced augmentations, the CRC patrols the backbones of the fluid router relays, scanning the communications for breaches and keeping the official CONCORD channels clean and safe of disruptive influences.
The capsule slid open. The neural connectors retracted themselves and he made his way out. Already, someone was waiting with towels and hot Arkonian tea, both of which he gladly accepted. The darkness inside the relay tower seemed almost intentional and the hum was louder now he was outside of the pod. Shadows cast across the router complexes while a glaring blue light paled in contrast to the world that waited in the pod. Damn, he did love his job.
He couldn’t wait to get back.
-Commander Orestes
Communications Relay Committee
Interstellar Services Department
Shan stubbed his cigarette on the deck, despite the Kapitan’s earlier admonitions about in-station regulations. The old bastard was soft after his years with those paper-pushing Fed Navy pod-wetters, soft as the blubber that hung from him. Besides, with the situation the way it was today, their high and mighty Legionnaire had better things to worry about than a smudge on the platform.
Climbing into the pod and fastening himself, Shan reflected on the current state of affairs. Ever since the Alliance had been born, the smattering of independent outfits morphing and mutating into the massive, brutal beast it was today, things just hadn’t been the same in Curse. The Salvies had been the first to complain, of course – you couldn’t fart in Curse space without the Salvies getting up in arms about it – but within a month it had become clear that this new coalition was nothing to be taken lightly. Squadron after squadron of Cartel fighters had fallen to Alliance battleships as their prized ‘roid fields were slowly wrested from their grasp.
Today, every outpost not huddled like a petrified mouse in some gigantic moon’s shadow had been taken over by the CA. Testing facilities, assembly plants and munitions dumps now all played host to the behemoth. The Salvies did what they can with the left-over minerals afforded by the Cartel’s ninja miners, but many of the ships and facilities they had today were still in a sad state of disrepair.
The bay’s speaker clicked on, sending sound ricocheting off the metal walls.
“Raider escort, clear for undocking,” came the hollow, familiar sing-song.
As the diagnostic systems finished their run-through Shan panned his camera drone three-hundred and sixty degrees around his sharp-tusked interceptor, making a quick inspection of the craft’s gleaming hull. All in order, it seemed. Ready for another patrol.
The docking bay’s doors hissed open languidly, allowing the undiluted rays of the burning sun to wash into the chamber at an angle. Dust motes danced in the columns of light as Shan Arvonak, Angel Raider, slid out of the station’s belly into the breathless void.
• • •
It had been exactly one-hundred and thirty-eight minutes of soul-crushing boredom when the first hostiles showed up on system comms. The opening of the pores, the nearly imperceptible quickening of the pulse, the prickle along the back of his neck – Shan felt the warrior instincts flush his system. As had become his custom, using the meditation techniques he had culled from the dog-eared Adakul text he kept hidden away in his footlocker, the young Raider stilled himself.
“Saddle up, boys.” came the Kapitan’s voice over the comm. “We’ve got two Black Omega.”
Shan’s composure held, but a tiny tremor shot through him like an electric jolt. Black Omega was, by now, one of the Alliance corporations known to every Arch Angel operative in the Curse region and surrounding zones of operation. They had recently colonized the belts two systems over, and stories abounded of how their security wing had rampaged through the area, decimating everything the Cartel had thrown at them while barely sustaining losses themselves.
And now they were here.
“Line formation, fellas.” The Kapitan’s voice was steady, but as Shan swiveled his camera drone to alight on the Legionnaire’s massive bulk turning slowly planetward he fancied he saw the slightest tremor, a flicker in the burners maybe, an invisible apprehension bleeding through the night, staining their resolve. Maneuvering his agile frigate into formation between the other two Raiders, he awaited the word from Central.
Twenty, maybe thirty seconds passed before the Kapitan’s voice came once more over the comm.
“Okay, we’ve got two unmonitored belts in-system, Planets II and VII. None of the patrolled belts have reported sightings yet, so we’re going in for a look. Zeta Wing is en route to Planet VII. Align yourselves for gang warp, gentlemen. Planet II, Belt 1.”
As time and space coiled into a spiraling tunnel around them, Shan promised himself that should he ever become a Legionnaire, he’d stay away from those awful group names. “Gentlemen.” “Fellas.” “Boys.” So unprofessional. So unbecoming the discipline and rigour that had made the Angel Cartel what it was – or, rather, had been before the Alliance moved into Curse.
The thought flared up in his head, overriding the nagging trepidation that had been playing at the corners of his mind. The usurpers who had spread over their domain like a cancer would this day pay for their presumption. Muttering a curse under his breath, Shan emerged out of warp.
• • •
As the warp engines died down and the fluid regulation system in his pod performed its deceleration compensation, that pleasing backwards flow of liquid over his body mingling with the ship’s gentle vibration, he saw the great checkered curve of the asteroid belt slide into view beneath him. Seconds later, his scanner picked up the hostiles.
There were two of them, both in Apocalypse-class battleships, eighty klicks away, twenty klicks from each other. Too far to get a lock. Simultaneously, the three Raiders began preemptory evasive maneuvers, waiting for the Kapitan’s word.
The seconds ticked by heavily as the smaller vessels glid back and forth while the Kapitan and his Depredator wingman fumbled for a lock on the intruders. Suddenly a feral snarl came hissing through the comm.
“Damn! They’ve locked me. What kind of...”
The words were abruptly stopped as a twisted pillar of light blinked into existence between one of the Apocs and the Kapitan’s ship. A great translucent globe came briefly into view around the craft, shimmering faintly before dissipating along with the enemy’s beam. In perfect rhythm, another gout of laser fire emerged from the other battleship, bathing the Legionnaire once more in shield-wash. In a few seconds, a macabre staccato of laser fire had established itself, all of it centered on the Kapitan.
“Go! Go! Full attack!” shouted the fat man in the big ship, his calm veneer now fully evaporated under the intense enemy bombardment. His curses now reserved for his incompetent Legionnaire, Shan slammed on his afterburners and thrust, rigid with fear, towards the distant ships firing those terrible, beautiful beams.
Fifty klicks, then forty. An explosion sounded behind him as one of his Raider companions was ripped cleanly in two by a stray beam, sending a fiery shower of metal parts arcing into the black. Thirty klicks. No time to back out now, Shan. Do your part. Trust the Cartel.
At twenty-five klicks, just as the battleships were taking form before him, he heard it: that sound, dreaded by every pilot ever to take to the spacelanes, the dreet-dreet-dreet-dreet of his sensors informing the auto-targeting systems that his vessel had just been locked. Like staring down the barrel of a cannon, thought Shan just as a distant boom sounded behind him, marking the destruction of another comrade.
And as Shan Arvonak, Angel Raider, came into firing range and saw his Howitzers’ bullets glance harmlessly off the ship he had targeted, saw the awesome bulk of the Apocalypse turn to face him like a giant gold-plated snake seconds before the light enveloped him, turning his ship into a golden ball of hell’s fire, two sudden realizations smacked into his skull, staggering in their clarity.
He, not his enemy, would die this day. And Curse space was no longer what it used to be.
The palace gleamed from a distance, radiating wealth and opulence. On closer inspection, it didn’t hold up well in the tropical climate. Starkman Prime’s proximity to the unforgiving Arzad sun meant the heat rarely let up, and here moisture had caused small cracks all over the walls, with the smell of rotting vegetation permeating everything. Today, however, with three men cowering on their knees in the open courtyard, the rank smell of sweat and fear managed to override it temporarily.
Arkon Ardishapur, the royal heir of the Ardishapur family, sat uncomfortably in a chair on a raised platform before the three cowering figures and frowned in the heat. The insistent buzz of tropical insects made it hard to concentrate as he let his gaze travel among the Minmatar slaves before him. They were guilty of rebellious actions and would soon be executed, but Arkon sensed they held some dark, sinister information, and so hesitated in carrying out their sentence. Arkon glanced at his palace secretary, standing expressionless to one side. Drupar Maak was a Starkmanir, like the slaves waiting to be executed. He was also a slave, but like many slave children that showed remarkable talents, had received a proper education in an Amarrian school, which had trained him to become a loyal, obedient civil servant. Arkon sighed and turned his attention back to the condemned slaves. They would have to be broken.
It took all of Drupar’s considerable willpower to keep his face impassive as he watched his secret associates being put through the wringer. Drupar could only admire the slow, deliberate technique of the royal heir as he questioned the slaves. Arkon had mastered the skill of breaking a person’s will through only words and gestures. When Drupar had heard of the capture of the three slaves, he hoped for a quick trial and an even quicker execution. Now, cold dread gripped his bowels as he watched the old fool grilling the quivering slaves before him. “Old fool, yes,” Drupar thought, “but devilishly cunning at times. Like a dog, he can sniff out conspiracies where no other man can.” As much as he loathed and hated the man himself, Drupar had long since learned to respect his master’s abilities.
Arkon absentmindedly fingered his golden scepter as he shifted his enormous bulk from one buttock to the other. He felt he was finally making headway with these miserable wretches. As he had suspected from the start, they were only cogs in a much larger organization; an organization aiming to topple Amarrian authority on the planet. Now, he had only to squeeze the names of the ringleaders out of them.
As the moment when he would be exposed as a treacherous rebel inexorably approached, Drupar felt his pulse quicken, adrenaline pumping through his veins, heightening his senses. Years of careful planning, hundreds of fellow slaves and rebels, all were in dire danger of being undone in one fell swoop. The questioning droned on until Drupar felt himself act—not deliberately, but as if driven by primeval instinct. Rushing towards his master and nemesis, he grabbed the golden scepter, yanking it out of the Heir’s royal hands. For a split-second he allowed himself to enjoy the look of shock and disbelief on Arkon’s face before driving the sharp, sun-flaring edge of the scepter’s head into his master’s neck. Blood sprayed everywhere. Chaos ensued.
Amazingly, the aged Heir, blood spattering from the gaping wound in his neck, managed to rise to his feet, his obese frame quivering in front of Drupar. A mechanical silver hand shot out of Arkon’s robes and grabbed Drupar by the neck, and from the corner of his eye Drupar saw guards piling into the courtyard, arms raised. Using every last ounce of his strength he managed to slip from Arkon’s grasp long enough to shout at the stunned slaves, still on their knees. “Get out of here! It has begun! Rise! Rise!” he screamed as he was sucked back into the crushing embrace of the dying heir. As daylight turned to darkness before Drupar’s eyes, he saw the three youngsters escape in the confusion.
• • •
Strong lights illuminated the courtyard, banishing the night. The unnatural light made the usually serene courtyard bleak and forbidding, but it fit the mood of the few people there perfectly. Idonis Ardishapur stared at the faint traces of blood on the cobblestones, musing on how bloodstains always managed to mesmerize people, making them conjure up all kinds of horrors in their mind’s eye. He listened to one of his lieutenants drone on about how the uprising in the city was already spreading outside it, and rapidly becoming unmanageable. On his other side stood the captain of the royal guard, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to make some pitiful excuses about the death of Idonis’ father. Idonis had already heard enough to know this was inexcusable.
Brusquely, he dismissed the two men, having no patience at the moment to deal with them. Instead, he walked over to where his friend Zoriac was standing, scrutinizing the golden scepter-turned-murder-weapon. Briefly, Idonis wondered about the symbolism of his father being killed by an item representing the Emperor’s will. He would have to reflect upon that during the morning mass. But not now.
Zoriac gave a curt nod as Idonis came up beside him, but Idonis took no notice of it. He and Zoriac, being of the same age, had been brought up together, and Zoriac was as close a friend as a future Royal Heir could hope to have. Idonis again regarded the scepter with mixed feelings. On one hand, it was one of the most sacred symbols of Imperial and Divine authority; and on the other it was covered with his father’s congealed blood. Idonis knew from reports that some of the rebels were already wielding shoddy replicas as weapons, calling them Khumaak in honor of his father’s killer. Idonis’ stomach soured at the thought.
Not for the first time this night he reflected on what might have been. He had agreed to accompany his father here to these savage lands, nurturing some naïve notions that maybe the Word of God could be brought to these newly-conquered barbarians.. Idonis now knew that the Minmatars would never adopt The Scriptures as their own, and part of him was glad, fearing for the purity of The Word in the uncouth hands of the Minmatars. And yet, calling them barbarians was now only a figure of speech. Once familiar with their rich culture, Idonis could not mock their traditions as he and his friends had done frequently as youths back in the heart of the Empire.
Involuntary, his mind drifted to the little hiding place he had down in the city, to the lithe and winsome creature he whispered words of passion and affection to during lovemaking. His family and friends would be appalled if they knew of his dark-skinned Starkmanir girl, with her almond eyes and her smile that was coy and bold at the same time.
With sudden realization, Idonis knew that that part of his life was over. He was a Royal Heir, now. Already he felt the weight of a thousand generations of Ardishapurs on his shoulders; the burden of the millions of subjects now looking to him for support and guidance. The idyllic lifestyle he had enjoyed here on the outskirts of Empire was gone. Like great stones grinding, he could feel his priorities shift. He felt at once elevated and apprehensive. He straightened his back and narrowed his gaze. Zoriac, looking at his friend, took half a step back, and Idonis saw that he understood.
“The other heirs will judge you by your actions over the next few days,” Zoriac said quietly. “A new heir must prove himself in the eyes of his subjects and his Empire.”
Idonis only nodded.
“You must clean up this mess your father has left,” Zorac continued. “You must send a message that you will be a strong leader, worthy to be called a Royal Heir.”
“What are the choices?” Idonis replied, already knowing them full well, but wanting to hear them out loud.
“Stamp out this rebellion of course, with any force necessary.”
“That will not suffice,” Idonis answered, sickened by his own words but knowing they must be spoken. “As you said, I must send a message to the other Heirs. Suppressing rebellions is an everyday occurrence. Avenging the murder of a Royal Heir is not.”
“What would you have me do?” Zoriac asked.
“Annihilate the Starkmanir tribe.” Idonis paused for a moment and caught his breath, mentally crushing something deep within himself. “Inform the orbital fleet. Have our people out of the cities and in orbit within a rotation. This planet will burn as a beacon, to illuminate the galaxy with the strength of House Ardishapur, and the Divinity of our purpose. None shall be spared.”
Idonis looked his friend in the eye as he spoke, seeing the regret there. He knew his own eyes showed the same. Regret about the life they were to leave, regret about what they had to become, but most of all, regret about what they were about to do. He allowed himself one more memory of his little hiding place, the long supple limbs of his Starkmanir lover, and the dreams he had harbored for the Minmatars. Then he let it go. Royal Heirs could not afford the luxury of dream.
“Time for mass,” he said, turned on his heel, and headed for the chapel.
Since his election three years ago the President of the Gallente Federation, Souro Foiritan, has been embroiled in a silent war with the Senate of the Federation. At stake is the question where the ultimate power within the Federation lies. The third pillar of the Federal government, the Supreme Court, has also been dragged into this covert war, fought on a broad front. Foiritan’s predecessors in the Presidency were weaklings and they were frequently brow-beaten by the Senate. In time, the Senate began to see itself as the true leader of the Federation, something that Foiritan is now furiously trying to overturn. In recent months many political events that would normally be considered quite insignificant have been blown out of all proportions as the feuding sides use them as a pretext to attack each other. Yet the battle lines have been slowly solidifying, revealing the underlying ideologies that the three sides really stand for.
While the Senate has become the champion of big bucks business and entrenched interests, Foiritan has masterfully maneuvered himself into becoming the people’s man - using his boyish charms to ride the wave of popularity he enjoys throughout the Federation. The leaders of the Senate - such as the astute Jaq-Foix Netharin and Maridane Wilfort the extremist - have used the lobbyists and the moneymen to build themselves a formidable position, though many feel this fortress of special interests is becoming more and more like an ivory tower every day. In this tug-of-war where the very foundations of the Federation are at stake the arsenals of the adversaries are filled with deceit, sleaze and words of hatred and they fight each other with armies of lawyers, hordes of PR stunt men and the voice of the media. And yet for all their efforts the only casualties so far have been truth and reason. Yet even those have found a champion - the Supreme Court. In the political havoc the Supreme Court has acted as a beacon of common sense - a solid rock for the hard pressed masses to lean on to weather the storm that threatens to engulf them. As is so often the case when a war for the fate of millions rages the survival of the weak is most at risk. It is here that the Supreme Court has found a cause worth fighting for and it is doing all in its power to uphold the principles of the Federation - brotherhood, fraternity and equal rights to all men.
The explosions were so powerful that the boy could feel them resonate in his chest. All around him people ran, some screaming, others offering assistance to those struck down as they tried to flee. Encircling him was the burning debris of shattered buildings as the skies continued to rain down fire and destruction. No matter how hard he willed himself to run faster, his legs became more and more sluggish, as if running neck-deep in water. Every single step forward seemed to take him several steps back. It was as if the universe was taunting him, diabolically laughing while conspiring against his will. His desperation reached a fevered pitch as he continued to struggle forward. The hell from above had claimed so many already; he had to reach his parents before the sky lashed out and took them as well.
The heat was searing, ruthless, yet onwards the boy ran, up the steps and into the home where all the memories of a truly happy childhood are, towards the center of every child’s universe: His very own beloved parents. The child was so terrified, he had to warn them of the danger, to tell them they had to leave, that death was everywhere and coming for them, but the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. There they stood, the two of them, reaching out cheerfully as they always did when he came home from school, as if completely blind to the terror around them, to the fire inside of their home, to the flames now licking at their feet.
He wanted to leap towards them but lacked the strength. His legs were suddenly incapable of any movement at all, unwilling to obey his desperation. And so this child watched his parents writhe in agony, screaming in pain as they burned, as everything else in his world had burned, and he opened his mouth to scream in horror.
“Monsieur…” A woman’s voice called to him through the fire, from somewhere above him, away from the blackened silhouettes engulfed in flames, the very image that had destroyed the innocence of this child forever. The instant he looked up, the inferno vanished, and he suddenly found himself beholding the planet Caldari Prime as though in orbit around her, that beautiful pearl resting in the crimson velvet backdrop of the Luminaire system. The boy was with the others who had survived, and they were taking flight from the barbarians who had done this to them, each taking one last look before leaving their home planet forever.
“Trevor, please wake up...” He was pulled violently away from the image, as Caldari Prime shrunk and vanished from view when the transport they were aboard warped away. Trevor awoke with a gasp, his bloodshot eyes bulging, breathing quickly and clearly disoriented.
“Mon dieu, how long have you been having these dreams?” asked Orsetta Lexmoreau, a research agent with the Gallente mega-corporation CreoDron. “This is the second time this week!”
Trevor had fallen asleep while seated in the research lab of the CreoDron factory in Atlulle III. Before arriving, he had gone more than 48 hours without rest. He ran his hand through his hair and down the back of his neck, sore from having been asleep in an awkward position.
He blinked his eyes a few times and took a deep breath before speaking. “How long have I been out for?” He never looked up at Orsetta, who was standing beside him. His eyes began darting back and forth between the dozens of data sheets and the screens on the lab desk in front of him.
“I first noticed you were asleep a little more than 40 minutes ago,” she answered. “ I do not know how long before then.” She sat down beside him and placed her hand gently on his back. She could feel the muscles underneath his shirt tighten up instantly. “Trevor, what happened to you? You shout these terrible things in your sleep, and it frightens me! What pain is this that you suffer so much from?”
She thought she saw his eyes glaze over for just a moment, but then the scowl that she was most familiar with returned. He turned his head slightly to his right, just enough so that his eyes could see her attractive features at the edge of his vision. “Get back to work, Orsetta,” he growled. “Now.”
He turned away and focused once again on the data sheets scattered across the desk. Orsetta had paused for just a moment to glare at him before getting up and leaving his side without saying a word. Trevor followed the sound of her hurried footsteps as they made their way to the lab’s exit. When he heard the door slide close, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, rubbing the temples of his forehead and closing his eyes again. He knew he didn’t have to be so hard on her, but he had accepted long ago that it was better this way. He forbade himself from allowing any remorse or attachment towards the people he employed, least of all towards those responsible for the pain that Orsetta spoke of.
On paper, Trevor Kekkonen looked like the model CONCORD citizen. He appeared to be just one of countless others taking advantage of the economic opportunities that had emerged since the end of the Gallente-Caldari War. The two states were eager to put the dark memories of those years behind them and forge ahead on the promise of peace and mutual prosperity. Trevor had graduated at the top of his class from the School of Applied Science in Todaki and demonstrated remarkable natural talent for research and science. He overcame the cerebral deficiencies required for effective starship command through the use of cyber implants and eventually qualified to captain both Caldari and Gallente cruiser-class ships. His outstanding combat record against the Gurista and Serpentis pirate organizations earned him high marks with both the Caldari and Gallente governments. And most importantly, he had developed extensive connections with quality personnel from some of the most powerful corporations in both states, including Ishukone, Kaalakiota, CreoDron, and Duvolle Laboratories.
What isn’t found on any of the dossiers written about Trevor Kekkonen is that he had witnessed firsthand the death of his parents during the Gallente surface bombardment of Caldari Prime. He was just 11 years old at the time. He had replayed those horrible moments over and over again in his young, hyper-analytical mind, searching in vain for the unanswerable question of “why”. The transformation of grief to rage took him to the brink of madness. What prevented him—barely—from breaching that fine line was the pursuit of the question “how” instead. In this venture, the answers he was searching for became perfectly clear.
In Trevor’s scarred mind, the notion that a failure of diplomacy had been the cause of the war and ultimately the death of his parents was completely unacceptable. The politics just shouldn’t have mattered in the slightest. Instead, he concluded that the blame lay squarely on the lack of superior technology when it was needed most. Gallente warships had pummeled Caldari Prime cities from orbit uncontested for far too long; had planetary defense been in the forefront of the Caldari technological initiative at the time, things might have been different. Instead, the technology was reactive; it created a punch-for-punch battle of technological advances that could have been avoided. As evident by the fate of Trevor’s parents and hundreds of thousands like them, the Caldari paid a terrible price for their lack of foresight. The Gallente had their orbital bombers; the Caldari answered with single-man fighters. The Gallente countered the fighters with drones; and if not for the Jovian gift of capsule technology, the Caldari might not have been able to muster an effective response at all.
As young Trevor watched the war and its technological innovations evolve into a stalemate, the rage within him grew steadily until the ultimate betrayal that hurled his soul into the abyss for good. The truce that left Caldari Prime—once the home world for millions of Caldari—legally in the hands of the Gallente Federation was the breaking point. Trevor felt that he was orphaned yet again, only this time a resurrection was possible—if only he could raise Caldari technology from the dead.
And so Trevor’s life became a dichotomy of purpose; part missionary, part vigilante, laboring on behalf of the “good” of one race by planning the death of another. The path leading him to the vengeance he craved had two obstacles. First, a detailed understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of both Caldari and Gallente technology--especially with their respective starship engineering methodologies--had to be accomplished. Second, it required bleeding-edge scientific breakthroughs that could ultimately be used to tilt the balance of power forever in favor of the Caldari State. On the first count, Trevor had already succeeded. But it wasn’t until the famous Crielere Research Lab—yet another sickening example of how the Caldari couldn’t push the technology envelope unassisted—had discovered the precious mineral morphite and its extraordinary chemical properties that the possibilities he sought finally began to emerge.
Trevor opened his eyes and scanned the progress of one of those possibilities. The datasheets contained the results of experiments and unfinished theoretical conjectures. He had fallen asleep while reading through some of them, exhausted after days without sleep. Orsetta was one of several research agents from corporations that Trevor had commissioned to assist him in finding the answers he needed. She, like the rest of the research agents under his employ, carried out the bulk of the experiments and research required to test his theories. They were dedicated in their work and brilliant scientists in their own right, but required his constant financial and logistical support to keep up with the workload he imposed on them. And although he realized that science was, by nature, a very methodical process that could never be rushed, his impositions were especially harsh on the Gallente agents under his employ.
He got up slowly to stretch out his legs. Walking over to the window opposite of the lab screens and holoprojectors, he leaned against the frame, watching the station approach warning beacons blink on…and off. There…and gone. Life…and death. Everywhere Trevor looked, the nightmare stared right back him. His only shelter from the demons was in the relentless pursuit of science. Once outside of it, his soul belonged to the ghosts of Caldari Prime.
Never again, he thought. To someday be able to speak those words to the defeated remnants of the Gallente nation that he despised so much was his life’s ambition, and he believed that science would one day grant him his wish. It was all just a matter of time, and he could stand the sleepless nights for as long as it took to get there.
The intercom broke his fixation on the blinking lights outside. “Monsieur, have a look at this, quickly!” It was Orsetta’s voice on the intercom, and there was a hint of excitement in her tone. Accustomed to being instantly agitated just from the sound of her voice, Trevor was about to say something rude when he noticed the lights in the room dim. When he turned away from the window frame, he saw that the holoprojector had been remotely switched on. There before him were a series of three-dimensional images floating over the lab desk, moving rapidly in successive sequence from mathematical equations to subatomic particle diagrams; from molecular compound models to exploded-view engineering drawings of mechanical components; and finally to the animation of those same components converging perfectly with each other to form schematics of the finished product. Performance and statistical information scrolled down along each side of the image. Trevor was shocked.
“This…this is the production compilation?” he asked.
Orsetta was so excited that she was nearly incoherent. “The containment issues were all solved, we’ve overcome the stability problems inherent with using morphite-based alloys and found a suitable quantum solution to the mesoscopic issues caused by placing nanosensors within the alloy shell to monitor…”
“Is..this..the..production..compilation?” Trevor interrupted, exaggerating the enunciation of his words. There was pause before the intercom speakers delivered her answer.
“Oui, monsieur.”
“So what took so long? Move on to the next project I outlined already.” Trevor walked through the floating image to the lab desk and switched off the holoprojector. A disc ejected from the lab table console containing the compiled blueprint information. He slipped it inside the jacket he’d brought and started gathering the rest of his things. It was time to leave and check on the progress of his other research agents.
The lab door hissed open and Orsetta walked into the room. She stood with her arms folded and stared at Trevor with a concerned expression on her face. He continued his preparations without looking at her.
“You have more work that you should be attending to,” he muttered.
“I cannot help but ask,” she started carefully. “What do you plan to do with those blueprints?”
Trevor paused for just a moment before answering.
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
To the outsider and the uninformed, the Caldari State seems a solid, unified entity. This has been true for brief periods of their history. The latest of those is now coming to an end. The eight Caldari mega corporations, like all great cynics, know the price of everything but the value of nothing and this is now tearing them apart.
Three blocks have formed around different ideologies, mainly in regard to foreign policies. While the forming of these blocks does not threaten the fabric of Caldari society it may very well move the Caldari State in a radical new direction in regards to their relations with the other empires.
Historians have pointed out parallels between the current situations and those found shortly after the Gallente-Caldari War started. Then, the mega corporations split into two groups, one that wanted to pursue peace negotiations with the Gallenteans and another that wanted all out war. The matter was solved during the Morning of Reasoning, when during a morning meeting of the Chief Executive Panel the warmonger corporations forced the CEOs of the other corporations to perform the Tea Maker Ceremony. The CEOs had to drink poisoned tea; if the Maker looked favorably upon them they would be saved, otherwise their crimes would be confirmed by their deaths. They all died and the warmonger corporations (the current mega corporations) split the assets of the fallen corporations between them and escalated to total war. Although the Caldari State is not currently at war, the political situation is similar in a number of ways and many fear that drastic events may be on the horizon, with the corporations busily drawing the battle lines.
The three factions that are becoming evermore apparent are each led by one of the large mega corporations with other mega corporations, as well as lesser corporations, closing the ranks behind them. At this early stage it is impossible to tell which faction has the most strength as they seem equally poised.
Heading the self-proclaimed “practicals” faction is the huge Sukuuvestaa Corporation. The SuVee, as it is commonly known, is one of the oldest Caldari corporations, matched only by the Kaalakiota Corporation in size. The exploiters, which also include the CBD Corporation and NOH (Nugoeihuvi) Corporation, have practiced unethical business tactics for a long time, as well as being frequently associated with organized crime elements. The practicals see the other empires merely as naïve markets ready to be exploited by unrestricted and ruthless trade where everything goes. The recent Protein Delicacy episode serves as a good example of what kind of business these companies want. They care little about who is a friend with whom and even less about what long-term political ramifications their unscrupulous business practices can have. They are mercantilist in their views on trade, believing that profit for one always means loss for another.
The second faction is the liberals, whose views are completely the opposite of the practicals in regards to interstellar trade. The liberals believe in fostering improved relations with all the other empires, creating a world where there are no trade barriers and free-flow of goods. They believe in trade deals that mutually benefit the participants and the empires can come together in a peaceful, prosperous future world only through cooperation. The liberals are led by the Ishukone Corporation and also include the Hyasyoda mega corporation. Their strong position within CONCORD is accentuated by their belief that it is their main vehicle in promoting universal peace and stability so that trade can flow freely and cultures mingle peacefully.
The third faction is not all that concerned about trade, but more about the place the Caldari State enjoys versus the other empires in both military and economical sense. These are the patriots and they are led by the Kaalakiota Corporation, but also include Lai Dai and Wiyrkomi. The patriots cultivate the Caldari heritage, reminisce about the great Raata Empire of old and weep for their lost home world, Caldari Prime. The most fanatical of them cry for a renewal of the war with the Federation, but they are a minority. The majority sees economical dominance in the world only as a tool to promote military power. The patriots are willing to negotiate alternative ways to acquire Caldari Prime other than through war, but they know that they can only see their dream come true by convincing the Federation of the economical and, most importantly, militaristic superiority of the Caldari State. This is what they strive for.
Pier Ancru slowly came to, relishing in the feeling of energy returning to his previously limp body. He flexed a few of his muscles, they felt familiar, yet he knew this was the first time they were under his direct control. Regaining his senses he took in the sterile environment of his surroundings - a small whitewashed, windowless room with the med-table he was lying on the only furniture. A somber looking servant waited on him. The room was located in his quarters on the Pend Insurance station in the Jolia system. Being the chairman and main stockholder of Pend Insurance gave him apartments in all their main stations, not to mention wealth and resources few men enjoyed.
A man in his position had easy access to the newest technology and, as the servant helped him put on a robe, he yet again marveled at this new mind-transfer technology. In the few short weeks since he started using it, it had transformed his life in more ways than he could imagine. No more tedious space travel, no more time wasting on idle journeys through volatile regions. All he had to do was set up clones of himself in places he frequented, hook them into the mind-transfer machine, and he could whiz halfway through the known world in a heartbeat. He could spend the morning in a dour board meeting on Alenia V, the afternoon sun-surfing in Maseera and the evening dining at Giraldi’s on Archavoinet II. ‘Ah, yes. Life is wonderful.’ Ancru mused.
Entering his living quarters, Ancru had just finished dressing when his servant appeared, announcing the arrival of one Jilaine Garat, the Police Commissioner for the station. Ancru had met the middle-aged woman before and knew her to be a committed and capable officer. Ancru put the last touches to his appearance before heading for the anteroom.
“I’m sorry to bother you, sir,” Garat started hesitantly after their formal greetings. “I rushed over here as soon as I heard you had… arrived,” she finished, still a bit unsure about this new travel method that few understood or even knew about. “A grave matter has come up that needs your immediate attention. But first, can you answer me where you came from, sir?”
“From Sizamod system, I spent the night there,” Ancru answered truthfully. “What is this all about?”
“Last night senator Papadour was assassinated in Palmon and it seems… it seems that it was you that killed him.”
“Me?” Ancru laughed incredulously. “That’s impossible! Why do you think that?”
“Well, the assassination took place at a banquet. We have hundreds of witnesses testifying that you were there, with the senator. Can someone confirm you being in Sizamod last evening?”
“No,” Ancru said slowly. He was no stranger to smear-campaigns in business or politics, but this went way beyond anything he had experienced before. “No, I was alone last night. Tell me what happened at the banquet. How was the senator killed?” “DNA poisoning no doubt. The killer - you - coated his hand in poison that only a right DNA combination could activate. Senator Papadour’s DNA, in this case. It’s a common MO these days. I have here a holoreel from the banquet, if you care to see it.” Ancru nodded his agreement.
The holoreel showed a large, glamorous hall, with at least 300 persons seated in their finest livery eating a lush dinner. The picture zoomed in on one of the tables, where senator Papadour and a man that looked identical to Ancru were seated, amongst others. The people at the table talked and laughed, everything looking perfectly normal. Then suddenly the senator grabbed his throat with both hands, his face turning red, before he collapsed face-forward onto the table, his body raked by a few spasms before becoming totally still and lifeless. Commotion ensued, then Garat switched the holoreel off.
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?” Commissioner Garat asked. “That was undoubtedly you, right?” Ancru didn’t answer immediately, he was deep in thought. “It would seem so,” he finally said. “But there was something… Something not quite right. I just can’t put my finger on it. Can I see the reel again?”
The second viewing didn’t jolt his mind and Ancru saw that Garat was becoming impatient, watching him intently. Then suddenly it dawned on him.
“I’ve got it! The man - me - was eating left-handed. I’m left-handed, but I still eat righthanded.”
Garat smiled at Ancru’s words, seemingly pleased.
“That’s correct. Your… file states this little fact and we noticed it. There were other small peculiarities regarding speech pattern, hand movements and facial expressions. Taken together, we can only surmise this was a clone impostor. Very professionally done, but not quite good enough.”
“You knew this was an impostor before you came here?” Ancru asked.
“Of course, but I wanted to gauge your reactions before revealing that fact. If we thought it really had been you my… entry would have been more swift and violent. Now let me ask you, do you have any information about who’s behind this? Any idea who wanted senator Papadour dead and you in deep trouble?”
Ancru sat down, rubbing his templates, thinking hard. He and Papadour had not been close, but they had rubbed shoulders on that deal with the State… He let his mind wander. The stakes were getting higher. Now, if the rumors were true, then…
“I have no idea who did this, Commissioner,” he replied at last. “But it will be fun finding out.” He allowed a small smile to touch his lips before summoning his servant to see the Commissioner out. “Oh, yes. It will be fun finding out.”
SCOPE AGENCY
July 2, YC 104
In a stunning announcement the Aidonis Foundation has revealed the recipient of this year's Aidonis Statue, the symbol of inter-stellar peace and harmony. Presented to individuals prominent in promoting galactic peace and co-operation, the nomination of Heideran VII, the Amarr Emperor, has taken many people by surprise.
The Aidonis Foundation is named after it's founder, the former president of the Gallente Federation Aidonis Elabon. To many, Aidonis is the greatest president the Federation has ever known. In his time the young and energetic president took the lead in bringing the empires together when to many it seemed the world was destined for bitter warfare for the foreseeable future. Under Aidonis’s leadership the empires met at the historic Yoiul Conference, and he was one of the prime catalysts for the creation of CONCORD and its consequent brokering of the peace accord that ended the long war between the Gallente and the Caldari (though the final peace was only signed some years later, after his death). Upon his death his will called for a Foundation to be set up in his name, which was responsible for rewarding those persons that most upheld Aidonis vision for peace and prosperity in the world of EVE. In the spirit of friendship advocated by the former president, the committee that handles the nomination is populated by people from every race and culture, equally taking the views of everyone into account.
Heideran VII is the first Amarr Emperor to receive the award and the decision has turned out to be controversial. There is no denying the fact that under Heideran's leadership the Amarr Empire has become much more amiable in it's relations to the other empires. Relations between the empires have never been better and seem only poised to get even better in the near future and many contribute this fact directly to Heideran VII. In fact, those that have expressed outrage over the decision have grudgingly admitted that Heideran is a great leader that is undoubtedly one of the main reasons for the tranquil world we now live in. Their only gripe is with the Amarrian society itself, such as practices of slavery and other breaches of human rights.
These issues, while unquestionably important to any philanthropist, cannot deter from the overall picture: that if it wasn't for Heideran's personal interest in seeking compromises every time a potential political powder keg threatened to explode in the face of the world community we would now be living in a world of constant strife and warfare, with untold suffering that would encompass. Indeed, the praises and thanks that have rained in from every corner of the world of EVE since the announcement was made far outnumber the few critics. Heideran VII is the symbol of the peace and prosperity we have all come to love and cherish.
Two thousand years ago, not long after the Amarrians ventured out into space, an emperor whose name now is known to few came into power. His legacy still reverberates throughout the Amarr Empire, a legacy born with his death, a legacy far different that the one he intended for himself. He was called Zaragram II and since his death his name has been a curse word for the Amarrians, for none more than the Ardishapur family that spawned him.
At that time, the status of the Amarr Emperor, though undoubtedly the head of state, was still subtly different. He was the leader of the Apostles, the first among equals, and his authority was channeled through the Apostle Council. But Zaragram hungered for more direct power; he wished to elevate himself above the common clergy into godhood itself. He regarded himself as the worldly manifestation of divinity. As soon as he came into power Zaragram started issuing decrees, most of them religious in nature. Many of these decrees directly usurped the Scriptures and many of the most sacred traditions of Amarr society were uprooted and eradicated.
Then Zaragram set out for his most ambitious project. He wanted to 'get in touch' with his supernatural self and to accomplish this he set out to construct the city of god - a place worthy of divine residence. The city was to be constructed in space, not bound to any earthly place, and was to be the eternal legacy of Zaragram's II greatness. Zaragram named his city Mezagorm, meaning Vision of god, though it was commonly known as City of god.
Things came about differently than Zaragram wished. Just when the construction of his glorious city, located in the system of Shastal, was completed emperor Zaragram was assassinated. Having accumulated so many enemies by then, any one of dozens of groups could have been responsible. After his death the Apostle Council became all-powerful for a short while and they did their utmost to bury his memory. His decrees were reversed, all icons and pictures of him where either destroyed or his face and name scraped out, and his city was laid to waste. In a few generations his name was all but forgotten. Instead of the glorious legacy Zaragram envisioned for himself, his rule contributed to the power of the Apostles and the Moral Reform it brought about some 500 years later.
Deep space is a gentle resting place and the ruins of Zaragram's city are still there to be seen. The city was a sprawling place and it scattered remains are visible for miles around. Some say that Zaragram's spirit still haunts the place, gliding between the rubble of his city, but others say it's only the looters having a field day.
The world of EVE has had its share of turmoil and grief in its long history. For centuries space travel has been the norm and in every nook and cranny extraordinary things can be found, each with its own rich background story for the whys and when it came into existence. One only has to know where to look to find them. The long treks through dark and empty space may seem lonely, but the oasis of life at the end of the line more than make up for it. Every city visited in this vast world, every country, every planet has its own unique customs and fables from some long lost past. And some from a more recent, violent one.
If you visit the Vilinnon system in the Gallente Federation you may hear about the Serpent’s Coil. The Coil is not something the locals are proud of and the Federation would rather know nothing of it. For in the Serpent’s Coil agents of the notorious Serpentis Corporation have made themselves welcome. Once the Coil was known by a much simpler name - Lookout Post 7-0Z. Built during the Gallente-Caldari war it acted as a military outpost against marauding Caldari ships. When the war ended the purpose for manning the base ended, too. A token force was kept there for a few years, before the station was abandoned completely. At that time local authorities had hopes of turning the system into a mining haven, but those hopes were quickly dashed when the Serpentis Corporation occupied the now derelict military base. The move was a stunning effrontery to the Federation, but Serpentis had timed their move well. A new federal administration was coming into power and it took them several months to sort themselves out. By that time Serpentis was firmly entrenched and when a few half-hearted attempts to dislodge them failed, the Federation adopted a policy of ignoring the problem - the Vilinnon system was too under-developed and insignificant in their eyes to warrant a large military operation. The Serpent’s Coil was there to stay.
The location of the Coil is of great interest to astrophysicists. The military base is located close to some very peculiar rock formations floating in space. Rumors abound about their origin, equally divided between natural explanations for the phenomenon and the more intriguing ones - that the huge rock boulders are the result of some strange experiment now long forgotten. The truth about the strange rock formation may always remain on the rumor level while the Coil remains in the hands of the Serpentis Corporation, which uses the old military station as a distribution base for its illegal merchandise. Naturally, it is not very fond of scientists, sightseers or other space tourists. Some say it is because Serpentis discovered the secrets of the Coil and want to keep them for itself. Nothing strange about that. Trespassers beware.
DAM-TORSAD
YC 105
The fifteen members of the extended Privy Council filed into the large room in the appropriate order of rank, the emperor leading them to an oval table in the middle of the lavishly decorated room. As duty required of him the court chamberlain presided over the meeting and read aloud the agenda. The council members listened, some intently, others indifferently. The emperor himself sat sunken in his seat, his frail head lying on his chest. It was difficult to say whether he was awake or not.
In theory, every member of the council apart from the chamberlain and the emperor himself was supposed to be a neutral aristocrat or civil servant whose only duty was serve the empire, but in reality each member had strong ties to some strong political group. This was generally accepted as long as no one group got too much influence in the council. In time, tradition had bound certain seats to a specific group, which nominated a new candidate at a time of vacancy. Even if this meant a fairly even distribution of power amongst the many political groups within the empire, actual power still fluctuated greatly depending on how persuasive a member was at the council table.
The first hour of the meeting was dedicated to the usual affairs of state. The chamberlain read out status reports from all over the empire and from embassies, then there was a discussion about foreign deals and agreements, fiscal matters and social issues. Once the formalities were over the talks turned to individual matters of concern. Predictably the most influential members dictated the discussions; the loud and dynamic Afrid Sarkon, cousin of the empress; the sly Sin Callor, from the Ministry of Internal Order; the assertive High Deacon Moritok of the Theology Council and the sharp and quick-witted Zach Dormondan, deputy of the Imperial Chancellor.
One of the items being discussed was a report from a governor in the Semou constellation regarding increased Blood Raider activity in the area. The governor feared Semou would share the fate of the small settlements in the Bleak Lands and be taken over or be destroyed and wanted permission to recruit a space fighting force to deal with the crisis. The majority of the council agreed to allow him to take these extraordinary measures to deal with a difficult situation, but when Chamberlain Karsoth was closing the matter the emperor stunned all present by suddenly arousing himself from his reverie.
“This will not do.” The emperor said, his voice still strong despite his frail body. “I will not permit any military forces in space to be built or operated by anyone but the imperial navy. Allowing provincial governors to establish their own armed forces sets a very dangerous precedence that can only lead to future troubles.”
The council members sat uncomfortably for a moment, not knowing how to react. It was almost unheard off for the emperor to interfere in such a way. That he had the authority to do so was unquestionable, but the council members, used to being able to run the day-to-day matters of state on their own, were more concerned about the precedent this sudden intrusion by the emperor might have on future meetings. For decades the emperor had slumped more and more into his own world and the council members had been more than willing to fill the power gap. The question now on everyone’s mind was whether the power they had started to take for granted was now to be revoked by a revived emperor.
Finally, Chamberlain Karsoth, ventured a comment:
“But most exalted one, the situation in Semou is dire. Unless we take this drastic action thousands of people will suffer at the hands of the evil Blood Raiders.”
“The governors can have their ground forces, but I will net let them into space. The Amarr Navy will deal with this matter in due time. Need I remind you that the good of the whole empire comes before the individual lives of its inhabitants? Maybe I should make an example of one of you to refresh your memory.” He finished, letting the threat hang in the air. Chamberlain Karsoth blanched and stammered some excuse too low to hear.
The rest of the council exchanged furtive glances. The certainty that the emperor was back amongst the living was sinking in and the dread on their faces was there for all to see. On all but one face, actually. Sin Callor hid a smile behind his hand, his eyes fixed on the emperor. For a split second their eyes met and Callor then knew without doubt that the whispers were true. Despite himself, he shivered.
Bix Arramida scrutinized the ship that lay motionless – lifeless – few kilometers away. It was a luxury yacht, made by the Viziam company. An old version; popular half a century ago. The numerous pockmarks on the hull and general metal wear indicated this ship had been floating here for as long. It was also immediately apparent that the yacht had not stopped here to allow the passengers to marvel at the view; deep scars not born by erosion crisscrossed the hull and the view here in deep space was far from spectacular. In fact, so far was the ship from any settlements or stellar objects that locating it without knowing its exact coordinates would be like searching for a grain of sand at the bottom of a worldwide ocean. But Arramida had the exact coordinates. His benefactor had given them to him.
Not knowing who his benefactor was still irked Arramida to no end. He only knew his first name, Norid, and that he was an Amarrian like himself. Other than that, nothing. A few months earlier Norid had approached him through underground channels. The job offer was simple – travel to certain coordinates in the Rethan system and retrieve all bodies from a derelict ship there. Then he was to take the bodies to a specific cloning facility on Rethan V and dump them there. That was all. No explanations. But for the amount of hard cash Norid offered, explanations became trivial.
Arramida’s sensors indicated life-signs aboard the ship. Further scans revealed a total of 15 people – still lost in cryo-sleep after all this time. Arramida had to wonder who had attacked the ship all this time ago and why this same attacker hadn’t bothered to finish the job once started. Arramida didn’t have any equipment to enter the ship and fetch the bodies, but a few careful slashes with laser cannon carved the ship up nicely. Then it was just a matter of sending in a couple of salvage drones to pick up the cryo-caskets. The crude operation naturally killed the sleepers, but the job didn’t require him to bring back any survivors, so it didn’t worry him all too much.
Arramida quickly scooped all the caskets into his own ship, taking care not to spoil any of the bodies. Norid had been very specific that none of the remains should be damaged. As an afterthought, Arramida scooped up some cargo containers floating out of the wreckage – nothing wrong with earning something a little extra on the side, he thought. Once finished, he set his course to Rethan V to turn in the bodies and collect his reward.
The moment Arramida had undocked from the clone station he sent a message to Norid, telling him the job was done. Then, chuckling over the fortune he’s made for such an easy job, he made his way to the nearest leisure station.
Norid re-read the message from Arramida with glee. At last, the final part of his revenge was in motion! The sweet taste of it, after all these years of plotting and planning, shook his frail old body. Of course Norid wasn’t his real name. He would never reveal that to an oaf like Arramida. But Norid was a good name, maybe he would continue to use it once it was over. Yes, that was a good idea, he decided. It nicely underlined the new beginning he would make after the deed was done, when he could finally throw off his shackles and rise like a Phoenix to his former glory.
Norid sent a quick message to the clone station, giving them the necessary DNA information to pinpoint the body he wanted sent to him. The rest they could use themselves as a form of payment for the services. The body he wanted should arrive within the next two days. Just as he finished sending the message, his master rang him. It was time for the master’s tea.
Norid was a slave. He had been slave for almost a century. He was getting old, but the implants he had from the time when he was a Holder were still ticking along nicely. Norid certainly didn’t feel two centuries old. Occasionally his implants needed a little bit of maintenance, but his master was kind enough to allow them. If only he knew that by doing so he was aiding Norid in executing his revenge on him.
Norid scuttled along the corridor with the tea tray and entered the study. The master could have used service robots or android automatons, but like all Amarr Holders he wanted the respectability of having a slave serve upon him. Norid didn’t blame him – soon he would have slaves of his own.
Norid scrutinized the master. He was old, even older than Norid, and once the two of them had been bitter rivals in Ardishapur’s court. Even after all this time, Norid could still feel the hatred coursing through his veins – hatred towards this man for what he had done to him and his family. Crushed like little pegs in political machinations, they had been stripped of their titles, their wealth and their ancestry, then sold like common slaves. His wife and son hadn’t survived long in the forced-labor camp. But he had survived, kept alive by his hatred for the man that was responsible for ruining him and killing the two people he loved.
For years Norid had nurtured his hatred, using it to drive him onwards – towards revenge. Slowly, but surely, he had inched closer to his nemesis, until he had entered his service as an attendant slave. The master didn’t recognize Norid for who he was – he only knew he was a former Holder. Having a former Holder as his personal slave sustained the vanity of the master.
In the decades since Norid had plotted his master’s downfall. Death wasn’t good enough. Something more elaborate was needed – a poetic justice. And now, the plan was finally bearing fruit. The body of the master’s son was on his way – rescued from the ship Norid had sabotaged long ago, waiting in his cold grave for the time when he became useful to Norid’s plans.
Now that time had come. For years Norid had lurked in the shadows, gnawing at the political and financial strength of the master. All that was needed now was a slight push to crush the master’s prestige once and for all, ruining him as completely at he had once ruined Norid. But that wasn’t enough. Norid smiled at the thought of what was to come.
His master, sipping his tea, noticed it.
- “Why are you smiling like a fool?” he asked sternly. Norid bowed his head slightly.
- “Because I’m happy to report that I found a suitable replacement for your clone that was accidentally destroyed last week,” he answered. “It will be ready in two days.”
- ‘Yes,’ he thought. ‘And then I will kill you and you will be cloned in your son’s body, and then I will ruin you and take your place.’ Norid started smiling again and served his master another cup of tea.
Worlds, moons and asteroids slashed by at a terrifying velocity as the bulky Gallente cargo frigate hurtled across the Murethand system, its anxious pilot pushing every last bit of energy into the drives. Every muscle in Uragan Zelp's body tensed in apprehension. The unwieldy Maulus began to rattle violently as it made the transition from smooth warp-flight to sub-light speed. He realigned his cam-drones to peer behind his ship, panning frantically to-and-fro, wondering just how far behind him his pursuers were.
Nothing.
He had some breathing room at least, thought Uragan. Spending the last two hours playing cat-and-mouse around Murethand's many moons and belts meant the three Caldari raiders waiting for him at the entry point were likely still searching. He pulled up a comm-link to the home base. The face of Director Nestor Makhno appeared on a screen in his mind, painted with annoyance. "You're an hour behind schedule, Zelp, and we've been trying to contact you for twice that. The client is waiting," Nestor half-whispered while tilting his own screen slightly.
"There's been a little problem," spat Uragan, the exasperation in his voice speaking volumes of his emotional state. "I picked up three tails, I think we both know what they're after. I'm making for the Melmaniel gate now, but I need to be met - I can't outrun them forever.” The Director’s expression changed to one of fear and worry, and Uragan spoke up again, almost shouting. “Whose idiot idea was it to ship the Vampire without escort? Damn it, Nestor! You don't pay me well enough to buy the good clones!"
Nestor had just opened his mouth to protest, when the telltale snap of ships emerging from warp-transit caused Uragan's blood to ice over in his veins. He abruptly cut off the comm, and again panned around his ship. There they were... three Condors, fifteen klicks aft of him and closing fast. Even at that distance he could make out the rabbit-skull motif stenciled upon their gunmetal hulls: The Guristas.
By now, Uragan was within activation range of the gate. He clenched his teeth as the fat frigate sank into the gate's periphery, and braced himself against the pod's inner wall, ready for a rough ride. The terrorists would be right behind him, and he knew what they wanted all too well; a blueprint for the Vampire, an assault drone the likes of which the universe could only dream of - and one fully functioning prototype. It cost more money than most fully loaded attack cruisers, and the manufacture process was a closely guarded secret. Some whispered that the drone used a biochemical CPU not unlike a living, artifically nourished brain. Uragan only wished he could unwrap it and set it loose on his attackers.
His stomach heaved upward in his abdominal cavity as the Maulus was belched forth from its wormhole. Uragan raced to find an escape route, scanning the planets and stations for an easy way out. He was about to start up the drive, when a soft impact caused the ship to lurch, and the electric crackle of energy, barely audible as it danced on its hull, made Uragan's heart sink in despair. The Guristas had used a warp-scrambler. He was at their mercy.
The mercurial terrorist's unshaven face swelled into view. He spoke in heavily accented Gallentean. "I think you know the drill, son. Eject the goods in a cargo container immediately or we erase you." Uragan's thoughts raced, and he stammered a reply. "It's not worth that much to me, I'll eject it! Just give me time, it's strapped down in the cargo hold!"
The Caldari thought for a moment. "You have five minutes, little man. After that, we'll peel you open and get the drone ourselves."
Panicking, he switched views to the frigate's cargo hold and brought the auto-loader crane online. Pistons wheezing, it swung to life, groping around like a blind man's arm in the dimly lit bay. After seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, Uragan spotted it among the various containers: the drone, its bright red casing gleaming against the soft cargo bay lights, was lying unpacked on a grav-trolley. Beside it stood a metal briefcase containing its blueprint. Uragan considered letting the Guristas have it, but his attention drifted to the adjacent drone bay's loading ramp. He smiled inwardly. "Like I said... it's not worth that much to me."
The tiny red drone drifted serenely from the Maulus' bay. Uragan could hear the Guristas' curses and threats. The Maulus rocked briefly as their cannons smashed into its hull, but soon the firing stopped - they had much more to worry about.
The Vampire stirred, its arachnid eyes gleaming to crimson life. It bolted sideways, avoiding a salvo from the lead Condor. Dancing and pirouetting around streams of fire, it responded with its own. In less time than it takes to blink, one of the Condors was torn asunder, another peppered by the blood-red fusillade of the Vampire's pulse guns. Trailed by a crimson contrail, it engaged the last remaining Condor and stabbed at it as the terrorist turned to flee. The warp tunnel was beginning to form around it, and the Vampire's cannons fell silent, unable to maintain a lock. Instead it steered itself into the fleeing Condor, exploding in a hateful red fireball - the terrorist soon joining the tiny red drone in oblivion.
He took stock of the battlefield - debris strewn about his vicinity was a testament to the Vampire's effectiveness. Already, he could see the Director’s ship approaching rapidly in the distance; no doubt he would soon get an ear full. He'd probably lose his courier job, he thought, but there would be more of those. For now, Uragan Zelp was glad to be alive.
Sometimes Runia Tamarik felt that all she did was travel. Constantly touring from one place to another, with as little time as possible spent at each destination before dashing to the next. Not that she could complain too much about her vocation - she was relatively well off and had an easy job. Her years as an inter-stellar trader had given her contacts and information that elevated her way above the basic traders. She was especially proud of her connections with the Caldari, as they were very lucrative for her personally and also for her nation, the Khanid Kingdom. The routes from the Kingdom to the State might prove long and hazardous, but the profits more than made up for that.
Today, Runia was especially excited as she was about to meet a Caldari trader she’d never met before. The man was supposed to have good connections to some top-level people in the Caldari corporate structure. If true, this meant Runia might be in for some big bucks. Yet she felt a little trepidation, not because of the high-level contacts the man had, but because he was Deteis. This was the first time she had done business with one. Until now her only contacts within the Caldari State where Civire - she was used to their mode of thinking; straightforward, above-board dealings where everything was planned and perfected. She never had any troubles with timetables or broken assurances. Deteis were supposed to be different - more cunning, more underhanded. These, at least were the rumors she had heard. But usually they came from people - Dark Amarrians - that had no first-hand knowledge of the Caldari. Other traders she knew said that although the Deteis were in many ways different they still shared all the basic Caldari traits with the Civire - duty, discipline and sincerity.
Runia didn’t know much about the history of the Caldari; she knew that Caldari Prime - the old home of the Caldari - had several continents and that the different Caldari bloodlines came from different continents. Back in the days when the Caldari still occupied Caldari Prime the difference between the bloodlines was profound, not only in physical appearance, but also culturally. Runia suspected that the beliefs that the Caldari bloodlines were very different from each other stemmed from these facts. But when the Caldari had to leave their home planet and the long and arduous war with the Gallente Federation erupted the Caldari race as a whole was uprooted and thrown into a melting pot were fighting for their survival was all that mattered. The frantic decades that followed altered the Caldari psyche forever. Traits such as discipline and loyalty came to the forefront and shaped - and continue to shape - Caldari society into something completely new. The corporate state came into being, an all-engulfing machine that both nurtured and dominated its citizens. All the different bloodlines, Deteis and Civire the two largest, were affected by these deep-rooted changes and molded to the norm.
The effect was that the Caldari thought of them as Caldari first, their corporation came second, with the bloodline they belonged to a distant third. None of the mega-corporations were structured around the bloodlines and they intermingled freely on every social level. Although the bloodlines were proud of their heritage they didn’t feel it was an important aspect of their life. Inter-marriages are not common, but this has more to do with physical differences than anything else.
Runia was about to dock at her destination station - an industrial station belonging to the Wiyrkomi Corporation deep in Caldari space. She waited patiently while the docking sequence finished. As soon as she was able she contacted her new agent. There was no need to wait - she had already prepared herself many times over on the voyage over.
One hour later Runia undocked. Her new Deteis agent for the Wiyrkomi Corporation had been polite and to the point and shown no indication of being sly or untrustworthy. In essence, he was pretty much like every other Caldari she had ever met. Yet there were slight differences, for instance he had inquired about her home back in the Kingdom and shown genuine interest in all things Dark Amarrian. An inquisitive mind was not something she was accustomed to with the Civire, who were usually dull conversationalists. This feel of more personal interest pleasantly surprised her.
Formalities aside, her new agent quickly established their working relationship. And he gave her a task to complete. A very unusual task from her usual trade-related one’s. She was to track down a ship belonging to another Dark Amarrian and report her findings. Runia wondered again why the Caldari were so anxious to track down this ship. She’d been tempted to ask, but refrained from it - it was none of her business and the Caldari would have told her if it was important for her to know. The enormous reward further underlined the urgency. ‘Now, how to find this bastard?’ she mused. ‘I better have a chat with my buddies in the royal navy.’ As the chat link connection was being established she idly wondered how she could get them to help her without giving up too much of her reward.
The wreckage was still smoking; isolated fires still nurtured contently in hidden corners, flowing unnaturally in the zero gravity. Case Omnicron scrutinized the debris, focusing briefly on a promising crate or box before moving on. The assailants of the large cargo vessel hadn’t left a lot behind. Normally, Case wouldn’t stoop so low as to scavenge destroyed ships for scraps, but he made an exception this time as the cargo vessel was essentially a fresh carcass. Case had witnessed from afar the fierce battle between the cargo ship and the two frigates attacking it. The cargo ship put up a surprising amount of resistance, maiming one of the heavily armed frigates before going down itself, hinting at lucrative cargo on-board. Case had waited for the remaining frigate to finish rummaging through the wreckage, as the capsules of the destroyed vessels made their way to the nearest station. The reunion of the downed pirate with the crew of the cargo vessel on the station would undoubtedly be quite colorful.
Fifteen minutes later Case set his course away from the wreckage, his azure-colored ship streaking away from the smatter of asteroids that encircled the battle scene; he didn’t want to spend too much time snooping around in case the pirates or the cargo vessel crew returned to the scene. Besides, he had just snatched a cargo container full of valuable trade goods and had no intention of getting caught with it. Case considered himself a lucky man. Ever since he first set out as the sole captain of a small space frigate some six months earlier, it seemed like fortune had smiled upon him. It was like he had an uncanny sense of being at the right place at the right time, without ever being able to explain this ‘gift’. Yet he always had a nagging feeling that he was somehow wasting his time; that he was meant to be doing something far greater and nobler, but was never able to grasp what this elusive thing was. As Case aligned his ship towards the nearest stargate, this feeling of loss; of being the missing link in some grand inter-stellar puzzle devised by an unseen but all-knowing being haunted his thoughts once again. As he was about to activate the warp drive, his mind went blank; his unconscious body slumped inside the ship’s capsule.
The two tiny ships approached Case's blue vessel at a leisurely pace. Their hulls, if they’d been visible, were a multi-colored swirl, like an oil spill. The ships glided silently to either side of the larger frigate, complex arrays of sensors prying apart every detail about the man and the machine they were focusing on. A quiet conversation between the two captains ensued. ‘Is this the man we want?’ said one. ‘This is him,’ the other replied. ‘I will start my work.’
The one stood guard, while the other worked in silence. His mind subtly instructed the sensors, sending data directly into the mind of the comatose captain within the blue ship. It only took a few minutes. ‘Is it done?’ one said. ‘It is,’ the other said. ‘I will awake him now.’
The two captains watched as the slightly bewildered Case Omnicron, oblivious to those watching him, finally made his way to the stargate. ‘Has the behavioral pattern been aligned correctly?’ asked one. ‘Yes, he will do much better now,’ the other answered with pride. Then, the hunter and the repair man, activated their own warp drives and started their journey home.
The Caldari State, with its mega-corporations and millions of smaller companies forming the fabric of society, hasn’t always posed as a united front as it does today. Several times in its history since the State was birthed following its break from the Gallente Federation, rival factions and companies have clashed, often with deadly intent. Most of the time, the cause of conflict is of an economical nature, but every now and then ideology or political differences are the cause.
One of these incidents was the Waschi Uprising, which took place a few decades ago in the Kamokor system. Then, a few radical Caldari attacked settlements of Intakis in the system and proclaimed that the Caldari State was solely for people of Caldari origin. The Caldari authority, as ever fearful that their finely woven social tapestry of corporatism would be torn asunder, sent in their best military units to quell the uprising before it could spread any further.
The Waschi Uprising did not leave any permanent marks on Caldari society. Still, it did leave one legacy that has carried on to this very day and that is Mordu’s Legion.
When the Caldari broke from the Gallente Federation many Intakis that sympathized with their cause were exiled from the Federation. The most militant of those went over to the Caldari and asked to join them in their fight against the Federation. These were all experienced military personnel and thus very valuable in the early stages of the war when veterans were few and far between. The Intakis were all put into a separate squadron, with a Caldari officer. His name was Muryia Mordu. Mordu was a brilliant young officer and one of the more open-minded Caldari, who generally are extremely xenophobic. He immediately took to the Intakis and they to him and together they formed one of the more revered fighting units in the Caldari Navy during the war with the Federation.
After the war ended the Intakis were offered cheap land and accommodations in Waschi City on the planet of Kamokor IV. For awhile the Intakis lived peacefully, slowly becoming part of the Waschi community. Yet the presence of the Intakis caused tension in the city and slowly radicals, feeding on the xenophobic tendencies of the Caldari, gained strength. In the end the radicals gained majority in the city and began seriously harassing the Intakis. When Caldari authorities tried to put an end to this the uprising started in earnest, with the radicals and their supporters demanding the exportation of all foreigners and the closure of the borders. The Intakis were driven out and, in desperation, they called on their old commander Mordu to help them defend themselves and get back what was rightfully theirs. Mordu, now retired, agreed to assist. The catch was that Mordu and the Intakis were no longer part of the Caldari Navy. Not deterred by this small fact, the group formed an independent mercenary corps to fight the radicals. This was the inception of Mordu’s Legion.
The Legion, mostly consisting of old veterans from the war with the Federation and young hotheads eager for action, helped the Caldari Navy to tear the radicals’ forces to pieces under the skillful direction of Mordu. The Caldari authorities were impressed by the fighting spirit of the Legion and offered to merge it with the Caldari Navy. Mordu and the other leaders of the Legion declined, deciding rather to focus on the mercenary nature of the Legion.
In the years since the uprising Mordu’s Legion has grown in stature. Today it is the largest and most famous mercenary corps in the world of EVE. The Legion has always had close ties with the Caldari State and the two assist each other on many issues. At first the Legion accepted only citizens of the Caldari State, but today they accept members from any race, as long as they are not known enemies of the Caldari State. Still, the majority of the members are of Caldari origin and the leaders are all Caldari. The Legion does not train its members, so they are expected to be experienced fighters before they apply for membership in the Legion. Members of the Legion get access to high-tech Caldari military equipment, even prototype weapons to test out, and are guaranteed plenty of employment if they so wish. Non-Caldari that have served in the Legion for a long time are offered Caldari citizenship on their retirement.
The Legion is often employed by governments to settle issues that are not directly under anyone’s jurisdiction, especially when fast deployment and swift results are needed. Their reputation as combat experts as well as fair and honest warriors has never been tarnished.
When Souro Foiritan began his five year tenure as the President of the Gallente Federation, the first thing he did was to expel his main competitors from the Progressive Party; veto laws on food grants to the poor and needy; and then go on a two-day pleasure space cruise in the Rainbow zone, stating he needed a holiday after a hard-fought election campaign. This bizarre Presidential behavior has in the past three years become even more colorful, prompting scorn and contempt from Foiritan's political enemies and foreign ambassadors alike. Even more bizarrely, Souro Foiritan is the most popular President in the history of the Federation. Time and time again, after Foiritan's latest folly, public polls on his popularity show little or no effects on his immense popularity (85% of the latest poll). The reason for this is simple: for all his buffoonery President Foiritan is a shrewd and intelligent politician. He is charismatic, easy-going and honest, but at the same time he's a strict disciplinarian that drives himself and his staff hard to better the lives of Gallenteans and further the cause of the Federation. Whatever his political enemies may think of him they grudgingly admit that President Foiritan is infuriatingly good at his job.
Unlike so many Presidents before him Foiritan is very much his own man - although he was elected as the candidate of the Progressive Party (and is thus a Progressor) he has deliberately distanced himself from the party in recent years. Ousting his main rivals from the party on the very first day of his presidency was a clear sign that he was not going to be a puppet dancing on strings controlled by the party leaders and his latter conduct towards the lobby factions has made it very clear that Foiritan is the one in control. Despite all this Foiritan is very much aware that being the leader of a democratic state, especially one as volatile as the Federation with all its ethnic, religious and economic differences, is a position built on quicksand. Take one wrong step and you are up to your ears in trouble.
The democracy exercised by the Gallenteans is a very open one - it is common for major issues to go to a public vote instead of being solely decided by the senate or the President. This is something that the lobby factions pushed through a long time ago as a way to utilize public opinion (which can be much easier to sway by master propagandists than the mind of the President) for important matters. President Foiritan has been able, due to his ongoing popularity, to use this forum several times in the past to push through tough issues despite senate opposition. Foiritan knows his people very well. He knows that even if Gallente society can be called a capitalistic one, the capitalism followed by the Gallenteans is fundamentally different than the one found in the Caldari State. For Gallenteans, the accumulation of wealth is something that is done on an individual level and personal wealth only matters in comparison to the wealth of other individuals. For the Caldari the economic wheels of the state are controlled by huge corporations and for corporations competition, efficiency and market share is more important than accumulation of wealth (although the latter is often a happy by-product of the former) - business for the good of the individual rather than the good of the many is something totally alien to the Caldari. This Foiritan understands very well and he knows that greasing the palm of a few individuals will appeal more to the Gallenteans than some blanket solutions that really does not help anyone all that much. In these matters Foiritan is at odds with the Sociocrats, the second largest political bloc in the Federation. Their leader, Mentas Blaque, is a sworn enemy of Foiritan and uses every opportunity to mock him and his government. The Sociocrats (the name of the party is Social Democrats, Sociocrats is what they are usually called) advocate social equality on all levels and that the federal government should make it its highest priority to aid those in the lower strata of society. Mentas Blaque loathes the individualistic approach of President Foiritan and considers it to be vile favoritism and simply unjust.
The latest dispute is that regarding the legal ownership of planets in unpopulated systems. The President and the Progressors want to hand out ownership on an individual basis, while the Sociocrats consider the planets to be the property of the Federation (as it was federal scout ships that discovered them and federal construction crews that built stargates linking the systems to the Federation) and the Federation should control colonization and development of the planets and allow the whole Federation to reap the rewards. The President is counting on the support of the Unionists (where Minmatar immigrants are very strong), while Mentas Blaque and the Sociocrats are counting on the potentially explosive pressure of the lower classes. The issue is currently being hotly debated in the governmental halls and many believe that sooner or later either party will call for a public vote on the matter. Many also believe that this issue, which is also hotly debated on every street corner of the Federation, could shatter the popularity of the President once and for all.
The huge asteroid tumbled majestically through the void, dwarfing his asteroid brethren close by, some of which themselves measured hundreds of meters in diameter. Gabri Cichan had been working his way towards the behemoth for the better part of an hour now. He had even given the huge asteroid a girl’s name, as was his want with asteroids he hoped would make his dreams come true and fill his pockets with cash - this one he called Theriese. His cargo hold was half-full of minerals by now, Cichan hoped to fill it completely by mining Theriese, preferably with some rarities. Approaching it was not easy - lesser asteroids seemed to swarm around it in great clusters, making it tricky to navigate through the maze of rock. Cichan kept his mining drones occupied on nearby asteroids while maneuvering closer to the big one. As soon as he was in range he sent some of them up ahead to start digging into Theriese. Getting closer Cichan noticed other drones mingling with his own. Thinking another miner was in the vicinity he started scanning his radar, but detected no ships - just those few extra drones and the asteroids rolling around his ship. Continuing his approach unabated Cichan squeezed between a couple of asteroids that formed a sort of a gateway to his objective. Finally entering the empty space around Theriese, Cichan was quickly unnerved by the sight that greeted him in the asylum beneath Theriese’s shadow.
Clinging to the inner sides of the two gateway asteroids were sprawling rogue drone lairs - hundred of meters of dark metallic and menacing abode buried deep into the rock and housing hundreds of wild drones. Cichan had heard of these monstrosities, but never one so big as the one he was viewing now. The lair was not only cleverly hidden in every direction from prying eyes - it was also superbly located close to the mammoth asteroid that was sure to attract miners from miles away. As a prove to that point Cichan noticed the remains of several ships perched by the drone lairs, being systematically taken apart by worker drones and incorporated into the ever-expanding drone complex. Fast approaching combat drones made Cichan fear his ship would share the same fate all-to-soon.
In a desperate attempt to escape the attacking drones Cichan slammed his ship into evasive maneuvers while trying to kick-start the warp drive at the same time. His only chance was to outmaneuver the drones long enough until his warp drive would activate.
The bulky combat drones were sluggish in their pursuit of the fleeing vessel, but more nimble assault drones surged ahead and quickly caught up. The assault drones were equipped with energy leech equipment and once in range they set out to disrupt the energy flow in Cichan’s ship. The ship’s power core could have coped with two or three of these little buggers, but the ship was soon swamped by them and the power supply drained rapidly. By the time the warp drive was online it was too late - Cichan no longer had the energy available to activate it. Then the combat drones arrived.
When Cichan was some minutes later being whisked away in his capsule he thought himself lucky to escape alive. His ship and everything in it was lost - it was now serving as fodder for the growing drone lairs of Theriese. Well, he thought, at least he had an interesting story to tell his friends.
Rogue drones and wild drones are the terms used over advanced drones that mutated out of control. A few years ago some ingenious Gallentean inventor had the idea of creating super-advanced drones that could think and act on their own - in essence acting in every sense like a regular space ship except being unmanned and computer controlled. First prototypes were encouraging, but then disaster struck. The drones became unruly, then unmanageable. Some of these were huge - the largest drones ever constructed, these drones were even equipped with warp drives and equipped with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence. These mother drones, as they were called, along with several lesser drones soon managed to spread out, not only within the same system as the research facility that birthed them, but also to other systems. Only later men discovered exactly how - the drones attacked and took over space ships, then used them to jump to other systems, the drones themselves safely hidden within the ship. Needless to say the super-drone research was soon abandoned by the Gallenteans.
The rogue drones soon started behaving very much like other living beings. They constructed a home for themselves, usually deep in some remote asteroid field, and began plans for reproduction. This involved both the mining of asteroids and attacks on unsuspecting mining vessels - all with the intent of gathering the materials needed to expand their homes and to build their own drones. As the months passed drone lairs popped up in dozen different places and today they can be found in almost every corner of the world, harassing and killing space farers of every sort. As each drone lair is started by a separate mother drone they often evolve in quite different ways. Each new generation of rogue drones shows some new mutations, creating a huge diversity in the shape, size and power for rogue drones.
Recently a new type of drone lair has appeared, commonly called a hulk lair. It seems that when rogue drones manage to capture suitably large vessels, like freighters or carriers, they don’t dismantle the ship completely, but instead start to incorporate their lair into the ship’s hull. Eventually these hulks break free from the drone lair that captured them and start drifting out of the asteroid field under their own accord, still inhabited by drones. Hulks like these have often been found drifting in deep space
In areas where rogue drones are numerous and seen as deterrents to normal mining and trade operations, the local authorities have taken it upon themselves to employ armed forces to destroy rogue drone lairs, or at least keep them from spreading too heavily. Discussions have been held between the empires and within CONCORD about a possible joint effort to rid the world of rogue drones, but these discussions have not let to any concrete deals being made. Thus, it is still up to the local authorities of any given place to deal with the drones as best they can.
One would be forgiven for assuming that with the countless billions of inhabitants in the world of EVE the acts of an individual count for little. Yet there are equally countless tales of individuals that through skill, perseverance or luck shaped the world around them and made their mark on history. Maybe most of these tales are only fables, kept alive with forlorn hope by the insignificant many. One of these tales is that of Maleatu Shakor.
Born a son of a Brutor Defiant, Shakor soon showed the signs of the eye disease that plague so many descendants of Defiants. The eye disease, a result of the harsh treatment the Defiants received at the hands of the Amarrians, is similar to glaucoma and invariably results in a complete loss of sight before the age of five. Unlike when under the yoke of the Amarrian occupation the Minmatars today have access to cures for the disease, but many decide against a cure as the white eyes associated with the disease have become a sign of respect amongst the Brutor clan. Shakor decided as a teenager not to undergo an operation to regain his sight. He did this not to gain respect from his fellow Brutors, but out of personal deference to those Defiants that lost their health and even their life as human guinea pigs in the gruesome Human Endurance Program of the Amarrians.
The Minmatar Rebellion was long over when Shakor came of age, but still he decided to take up the fight against the Amarrians. Joining a raggedy band of fighters (rebels in the eyes of the Amarrians), Shakor soon proved himself as an outstanding ship captain. Within a few months he had taken control of the rebel band and organized them into an expert combat squad. It was at this time that Shakor devised his infamous battle formation that bears his name: Shakor’s Spiral - a daring close counter assault tactic that only the most skilled pilots can pull off.
Shakor’s squadron operated on the borders of Minmatar and Amarr (actually Ammatar) space, like other rebel squads. Its notoriety grew in leaps and bounds, prompting the Amarrians to start targeting the squad with their elite forces. Pressure from other rebel leaders (who were taking a licking from the Amarrians) forced Shakor to leave the border regions with his squadron and set up his base of operation away from Minmatar space. Far from deterred, Shakor continued fighting the Amarrians from his isolated station hidden deep within the Great Wildlands. It was there that the strangest incident of his eventful life occurred.
Returning one day from the hunt, Shakor and his men were ambushed by the Amarr Royal Guard - universally regarded as the best fighting unit around. A fierce battle ensued. Shakor’s men quickly formed a Spiral, the Royal Guard responded by forming an Arrow formation, designed to counter the Spiral. Despite their experience, Shakor’s men panicked once their casualties began mounting and tried to retreat. They were hunted down and slaughtered to the last man by the Royal Guard. The Guardsmen wanted to make sure there were no survivors and systematically began destroying the escape pods of those pilots who’d managed to clamber aboard theirs before being destroyed. But when they locked their weapons on Shakor’s escape pod a Jovian vessel uncloaked itself next to it. Jamming the Amarr vessels with ease, the Jovian ship leisurely moved Shakor’s escape pod into its cargo hold before disappearing again. The Amarrians tried to track it down, but found no trace of it.
For two years nothing was heard of Maleatu Shakor. The Amarrians, initially vexed over the Jovian interference, assumed he was dead. Thus his return to the Minmatar Republic came as a total surprise. Where Shakor had once been fierce, driven and highly agitated he now seemed unusually calm and collected. Fearing some foul Jovian plot Shakor’s family insisted on DNA tests; they confirmed his identity. Shakor himself has remained silent about his time with the Jovians. He assumed a political position with the Republic and soon resumed his fight for freeing Minmatars still enslaved by the Amarrians, with the difference that his arsenal now consists of sharp words and political machinations instead of a fleet of space ships. Just as his ancestors defied the Amarr rule all those years ago Maleatu Shakor continues to this day defying the Amarrians at every opportunity in the halls of diplomacy all over the world of EVE.
Five hundred years ago the Intaki people lived a simple life on their home planet. For them the sky was a mystery they were only slowly unfolding with their pre-industrial technology. Then the Gallenteans arrived and swept them into the modern age in one swift stroke. The Intakis, initially overwhelmed, adapted quickly and within a century they had seasoned space travelers and active members of the Gallente governing body. They soon established their reputation as fair-minded humanists that excelled as deft negotiators and clever businessmen, fitting perfectly into the Gallentean way of life.
The social uproar following the Caldari departure from the Federation touched the Intakis deeply and many of them sympathized and even supported the Caldari - the yoke of the cumbersome Federation bureaucracy lay as heavily on the Intakis as the Caldari. Understandably the Gallenteans were forced to deal harshly with these elements to prevent a complete fragmentation of the young Federation.
Apart from a few minor uprisings the Federation quickly subdued the Intakis. Those deemed the biggest threat to the stability of the regime were arrested and exiled. Some of these went over to the Caldari side, but the majority of the exiles, some five thousand in total, went out into the great unknown at the outskirts of Federation space. There they built themselves new homes in the form of sprawling space stations - the Federation barring them from colonizing any planets or moons.
In time as the exiles became more organized and their power increased through asteroid mining and black market trading they formed a loosely connected organization and termed it the Intaki syndicate. The syndicate is not political in any sense - each member station enjoys complete autonomy - but they share economical information and help each other in security matters.
The territories of the Intaki syndicate are open to everyone, no matter their race, political creed or legal stature. The syndicate is not vastly wealthy or powerful, but they serve an important function on the fringe of empire space - acting as the safe havens for anyone and everyone where everything can be bought and sold, no questions asked. While the Federation was still the Promised Land the syndicate territories received the residual immigrants that weren’t allowed into the Federation for one reason or another, thus slowly growing in size and importance.
Each syndicate station has its own governor who has complete authority over their station and its surroundings. These governors are those that were instrumental in constructing the station all those years ago, or their descendants. The unofficial leader of the syndicate in years past was the governor of Poitot station, Dorn en Diabel. A charismatic and passionate leader he installed order in the chaos that reigned after the exile and set the foundation of the syndicate. Like so many prominent Intakis en Diabel was an albino, which lent his authority the strength needed to push his will through.
A decade ago en Diabel died in a freak accident, meaning his mind couldn’t be transferred to his clone. His eldest son inherited his father’s position as station manager of Poitot station. But trouble was brewing on the horizon. Syndicate rivals of the en Diabel family were gathering strength for a coup. Not possessing his father’s shrewd political mind young Gare en Diabel was clearly out of his league and his equally weak siblings on Poitot were incapable of lending the kind of assistance needed.
But one child of Dorn en Diabel was not on Poitot, nor had been for more than five years. Silphy en Diabel, his youngest, had been sent off to the Sisters of EVE after one heated row too many with her father. Alone among Dorn en Diabel’s offspring Silphy had inherited her father’s wits and passion, as well as her mother’s fiery temper. Her stay with the Sisters, initially intended as a punishment, grew into enthusiasm for Silphy - for the first time she was free of her father’s iron will and free to live as she liked. She struck a friendship with Santimona Sarpati - an influential Sister that also happened to be sister to the notorious V. Salvador Sarpati, head of the Serpentis Corporation. But just as Silphy’s career with the Sisters seemed poised for rapid take off, she decided to heed the desperate calls of her family and head back home to Poitot.
Once there Silphy quickly assessed the situation and then in one swift stroke as cunning and brutal as any her father had deceived, she seized the initiative. First, she altered the station charter so that from now on the populace would elect the governor for life, this went unopposed as the family’s enemies thought this a sign of weakness - their view confirmed a week later when one of their own was elected governor. But then Silphy put the next step of her plan into motion: she secretly arranged for attacks on all inbound food supply ships, thus slowly putting Poitot station in a state of starvation. Naturally, the enraged populace blamed the new governor. Silphy, using her Sisters of EVE influence, then had emergency food supplies brought in on vessels of the en Diabel family (which were of course left alone). Thus Silphy made herself champion of the people and when the governor was driven out of office Silphy won the next elections by a landslide. Having shattered the reputation of her enemies she started systematically ruining them financially until she was the undisputed leader of Poitot station. At the same time Silphy strengthened her position as the head of the en Diabel family - she sent her brothers abroad and kept a strict control of their monetary allowance to keep them dependant on her. She has also slowly asserted herself as supreme leader on Poitot station, the brief influence of the populace soon to fade to nothing.
In the years since Silphy en Diabel became governess she has regained her fathers prominence as the unofficial leader of the leaderless Intaki syndicate. Her power has never been seriously tested, although she lost her connections with the Sisters of EVE once it was discovered that she’d collaborated with the Serpentis Corporation in her bid for black market dominance in and around the Federation. Santimona Sarpati, once her good and trusted friend and ally, has turned her back on her and just as she calls her brother King Sarpati she now mockingly calls Silphy Queen Silphy of the syndicate, stating that they compliment each other perfectly in their exploitation and contempt of their fellow humans.
And then it was all over. The capsule cracked open. The naked skin, exposed to direct sunlight, flared up. The body swelled, convulsing uncontrollably. Just as consciousness faded the saliva boiled on the tongue. Death came quickly thereafter. The body mingled with the debris of the former frigate. In the background police ships chased down the killer.
It all began so innocently. Two Gallentean frigates cruising along in Federation space. Chatting amiably. One a wide-eyed rookie; the other one acting the veteran part. Disaster: a war of words, followed by threats and insults. Then chat stopped and weapons talked. The rookie never stood a chance. But wait! Police ships approach. Too late to save the rookie. So they punish the offender. Justice is swift - an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. The veteran’s body joins the rookie in its graceful dance around the sun.
Yet both live. This very moment they wake to life in their brand new bodies. Maybe they will get a chance to dance again some other time - maybe then the rookie will have learned some new tricks.
This is not the end. The cycle of life saved the fallen two from oblivion. So too their cadavers are returned to the eternal circle one more time. Their frozen dance interrupted as soon as the horizon swallows the police ships. A non-descript ship sidles up. A couple of salvage drones fleetingly deployed. The lifeless bodies snatched up and hurriedly returned to the ship. Getting caught body mining by the Gallente police means serious, serious trouble. Then the ship warps away, wanting out of Federation space quickly with its very hot cargo. Searching for a cloning facility that doesn’t mind a bit of ill-gotten A-grade biomass on the side. Life goes on, citizen. Nothing more for you here.
Those traveling within the Gallente Federation from the Peccanouette Circle to the Patrie Perimeter can make a shortcut midway through by traversing Ouperia - a cold and uninhabited white dwarf system. Few now remember the name Ouperia - most people only know it by what it is commonly called, Old Man Star.
Interstellar jump drive technology is fairly new. Until it came along, the only way for the empires to expand their territory was to send a ship to a solar system to build a stargate. The fastest versions of these construction ships managed a speed of ca. 30% of the speed of light. At this speed a system 10 light-years away could be reached in 33 years, or there about. The crew of the construction ships was put into cryogenic stasis for the duration of the trip, only to be revived once the destination was neared.
Later, after jump drive technology became available, several of these ships were retrofitted with jump drives. This meant that decades-long trips were a thing of the past. However, none of these older models had been built to handle the sort of technology found in these jump drives, and this meant that stories of fateful malfunctions circulated frequently. One such story was that of Old Man Darieux’s construction ship.
In YC 11, when the Gallente-Caldari War was near its end, a Gallentean construction ship set out for the desolate system then known as Ouperia. There was little monetary gain to be had from the system’s middling asteroid fields, but a stargate there would serve as a link between the Peccanouette Circle and the Patrie Perimeter, which made it a good long-term trade prospect. The construction ship departed from Villore system, some 12 light years distant. Estimated travel time was only a few minutes. The crew consisted of five people, a huge reduction from the old days when dozens of crewmen were needed – with the technological advances made over the course of the war, swarms of drones and robots were by that point responsible for most of the actual construction, with the crew acting mostly as operators and technicians.
Shortly after the construction ship set out, disaster befell it. A miscalculation in the drive made the jump misfire, sending the ship several light years off course and planting it in the middle of an asteroid belt. Seconds later, a large asteroid hit the ship full force. The impact killed four of the ship’s crew, but the fifth survived. His name was Ceul Darieux and he was the ship’s drone operator.
Back home the authorities, still embroiled in the war, were facing great internal debate as they pondered CONCORD-mediated peace talks with the Caldari. Finding little incentive to lose another multi-million ISK ship on a system with no greater short-term value than Ouperia, they opted to shelve the project. Since the vessel’s calculation error was evident to the station personnel who’d sent it off, and because its subspace beacon and comms arrays had been damaged in the impact, the ship was believed destroyed and written off.
Darieux’s immediate problem was how to feed himself – to save space and weight no food was carried on the ship, but the greenhouse bulbs from the ship’s earlier incarnation were still equipped to grow edible plants. This, however, required the proximity of a sun to provide the essential light and heat - in short, the greenhouse bulbs and the plant seeds were useless in deep space. Water was an equally pressing problem, as was the shortage of oxygen. The state of the ship did not make things any easier - the asteroid had ripped a huge gash into the side of the ship and destroyed many of the ship’s vital systems. The cargo hold was hit especially hard - debris of destroyed equipment and pieces of the asteroid cluttered the small space.
Darieux put his engineering skills to good use to solve these problems. He began by tampering with the fuel tanks. The fuel tanks, filled with liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, served the propulsion system once the ship had to be slowed down once near the destination system. Fiddling with the fuel tanks was extremely dangerous, as the ingredients were highly flammable, but with patience and caution Darieux managed to get a controlled reaction out of the fuel, which gave him both water and oxygen. Then he welded together every piece of glass and metal plate he could muster in the ship to gather and store what little light he could from distant stars. This was sufficient for him to start food production in one greenhouse bulb - by linking the bulb into the ship’s septic tank fertilizers for the plants were secured. The result was enough food for one man and later enough oxygen production as well. In other words, Darieux managed to create his own little ecological system.
Once Darieux had stabilized the conditions on the ship and provided for himself he next had to adjust the course of the ship. The impact had slightly altered the ship’s course and in the vastness of space it meant the ship would bypass the Ouperia system by billions of kilometers. The propulsion system had been damaged beyond repair - the ship was out of control and heading into deep space for eternity. The more time spent on a solution the further adrift the ship would be, so a quick resolution was required. Instead of spending valuable time trying to build a new propulsion system Darieux opted for a more ingenious solution: The ship was equipped with a token force of combat missiles. Darieux fired the missiles and turned them around to explode against the strongest points of the ship’s armor. By carefully calculating the impact points and controlling the size of the explosion Darieux managed to correctly align the ship to its original course. Darieux briefly contemplated trying to turn the ship completely around, but quickly realized that he neither had enough missiles for this, nor would the hull withstand such a brute way of turning around even if he had them.
Now the dullest part of the journey began, as the ship was still decades from Ouperia system at its current speed. Darieux spent the time creating fantastic robots and designs using the scrap heap in the cargo hold. He discovered that the asteroid that hit the ship had been very rich with the super rare mineral megacyte - which has unique qualities that make it extremely valuable in advanced robotics and drone manufacturing. Having to live and work in zero gravity year in, year out gave Darieux a distinctive insight into hi-tech assembly and despite the limited resources and tools at his disposal, what he created during those long long years has never since been surpassed in originality or brilliance.
At long last the ship entered the Ouperia system, 44 years behind schedule due to the decreased speed caused by the impact and subsequent missile explosions. Over the years Darieux had invented several techniques for slowing the ship down, just for this occasion. His main method was to use the stellar bodies in the system to help him slow down. Even if the propulsion system itself was still out of order Darieux managed to get some of the directional thrusters to work, feeding them with the last drops of fuel. Now he began to zigzag between the system’s planets, using the gravity to his advantage to stop the ship and even going so far as to enter the atmosphere at one point (protecting the ship with a handcrafted shield). Through these unorthodox methods Darieux managed to stop the ship from shooting out into deep space again.
By this time Darieux was an old man, his gaunt body in a bad state due to too much time in zero gravity. Yet his spirit was still strong and he was unwilling to give up now that he’d managed to reach his destination. Satisfying though it was to be in the Ouperia system his situation was still dire as the prospects for any kind of rescue were absolutely none at all. His fate lay entirely in his own hands and the only option was to try to construct the stargate all by himself.
All the equipment needed to construct the stargate was long since destroyed or altered beyond recognition. Darieux was forced to start from scratch devising and building innovative drones and robot factories. He centered his activity around a large asteroid that was conveniently close to the resonance point between the white main star and its tiny brown companion. There, on that asteroid, Darieux constructed a small assembly factory as well as his home and for five years he labored along with his robot friends to complete, single-handedly, a stargate. A feat that maybe a handful in the whole universe could pull off, Darieux performed at the age of 80 – white-haired, wrinkled face, shaky hands and all.
Imagine the surprise of the stargate controllers in the Villore system when a patched up construction ship limped through their stargate - the triumphant remains of a mission long since considered dead and lost. Darieux reveled in the media limelight for a while before launching his own company, CreoDron, centered on the blueprints created in an incredible voyage lasting almost half a century. He died a few years later, his frail body and failing internal organs too badly damaged for cloning. But his legacy remains strong to this day - CreoDron is the biggest drone manufacturing company in the universe of New Eden and the innovations of its founder still drive the drone industry. Renaming the Ouperia system the Old Man Star is the least an appreciative world can do.
| 1 | Now it came to pass in the third day of the first month of the tenth year of the rule of emperor Amash-Akura that the midday deliberations were abruptly brought to a halt when the day darkened in the sky. |
| 2 | And the sun went black as night and birds fell from the sky and flowers shriveled in the field and people fell sick in the streets and in the houses. |
| 3 | And in this moment of terrible distress the skies opened with a loud shriek and angels, bright as the sun was black, descended down to earth and their beauty soothed all the people and the animals alike. |
| 4 | And when the angels touched the ground with their feet the earth shook violently and fire engulfed those daring too near the divinities. Their power being mighty and their presence potent the people were wise not to look too closely upon them. |
| 5 | The emperor came from his high seat with his retinue to meet with the angels outside the city walls. And lo and behold! The moment the emperor passed below the city gates the sun cleared and shone as brightly as ever before, all in the glory of the emperor and the heavenly angels that called upon him. |
| 6 | The angels spoke the language of God and called themselves sefrim: those that guard the high seats of heaven. God ordered them here to protect the emperor against all evils that ever beset him. |
| 7 | The sefrim offered unto the emperor a present from God as one brother to another: Ametat the Scepter and Avetat the Crown, showing the great pleasure God had in the earthly work of the emperor. |
| 8 | And thus the sefrim came to serve the illustrious Amash-Akura, to stay by his side during the day and guard his sleep during the night. A great house of white stone and marble was built for the sefrim to reside in and were tended by the best servants the empire had to offer. |
| 9 | For a hundred years while the sefrim watched over the empire no wars or epidemics or famines ruined the lands and the people were content and joyous. |
| 10 | From Istha in the north and Melekel in the south and Edras in the east and from Iphria in the west people came to pray before the holy sefrim and receive a blessing to take home to their families. |
| 11 | The sefrim stood tall and beautiful, clad in their white and amber robes, with masks of gold and silver to protect people from being struck dead by their angelic beauty. |
| 12 | And all this time the emperor Amash-Akura did not age one day and was as healthy and strong as the day he came of age. The Scepter gave him vigor and the Crown gave him acumen and his rule was wise and fair. |
| 13 | Then Molok the Deceiver sundered the lands and the people suffered floods and plagues conjured by him. Molok turned the people against the sefrim and people who once sang their praise now abhorred them. |
| 14 | The emperor saw that all was not good and summoned the sefrim and said unto them, The people are in great distress, what remedies doest thee have? |
| 15 | And the sefrim answered, My Lord, the land has split against thou, thou must make war upon thy enemies to reclaim what is justly thine. |
| 16 | And the emperor asked, Will thee aid us in this perilous endeavor? |
| 17 | But the sefrim answered, No my Lord, we are here only to guide and guard, it is forbidden to us to aggress upon any man. |
| 18 | Then be gone! The emperor said in anger, for his foes were formidable. |
| 19 | And the sefrim, not longer in the emperor’s favor returned to from whence they came that very day. And the moment they left the sun went black and people cried in anguish for this was an evil omen. |
| 20 | And that night God spake unto emperor Amash-Akura in his sleep, Thy folly is great, Amash-Akura, thou hast rejected those I sent to thee in thine hour of need. Thou must redeem thyself to me by thy own merits. |
| 21 | And next day Amash-Akura had aged all his days and his hair was white and his skin wrinkled. But his spirit was high and his will resolute. God had charged him to take back his empire. |
| 22 | For five years Amash-Akura battled his enemies, wielding the Scepter and the Crown, and triumphed in the end. The day after Molok the Deceiver was brought before him in chains and sacrificed on the altar of God; the emperor died in his bedchamber, his task fulfilled. |
| 23 | And that night the sky turned red and the people were again happy that God was content with them and the new emperor. |
- Chapter I of the Epitoth
in the Book of Scriptures
The above text found in the holy book of the Amarrians the Book of Scriptures (actually several volumes). It dates more than 6000 years back, to the time when the Amarrians were still a fledgling nation on the planet Athra (later renamed Amarr Prime, once the Amarrians had conquered it completely). The story of the sefrim and Ametat and Avetat has fascinated scholars for ages. The first chapter of the Epitoth is the oldest text containing information about the sefrim and is also in many ways the most detailed. It describes their arrival and departure, as well as their appearance. In later texts the sefrim are only mentioned as mythical creatures and servants of the Amarr God and emperor.
But there are in existence fragments of texts from various sources that speak of the gifts the sefrim (singular form: sef), the Ametat and the Avetat, or the Scepter and the Crown. These fragments not only support the truth of the story (at least up to a point), but they also contain information regarding what happened to the items. The Scepter and the Crown, described as made of incredibly light-weight metal, yet also very strong. No surviving manuscripts give any exact info about their function other than they allowed the user to ‘wield the power of God’ and ‘harvest the knowledge of creation’.
There are more facts that support the story. Astronomical data shows that two solar eclipses occurred in the space of 101 years in the same time period as the text was (accurately established) written in. Both of these eclipses were caused by the large planet Zorast, the next planet between Amarr Prime and the sun (none of the Amarr Prime moons are large enough to create anything more than hardly noticeable solar eclipses). The first of the Zorast solar eclipses created full umbra on Amarr Island, while in the latter the island was only in the penumbra of the eclipse. What is more, five years after the latter eclipse a huge asteroid hit the gaseous Zorast while the planet was well aligned with Amarr Prime, an event that was undoubtedly spotted on Amarr Island.
Going back to Ametat and Avetat, the two items remained in the emperor’s family for four centuries, when they inexplicitly disappeared. In one of the last texts to mention it, a report made by the Amarr Court Chamberlain, it is stated that despite their age not one blemish or rust-spot is to be found on them. Despite numerous red herrings and fabrications through the ages, as well as many methodical searches, the real Scepter and the Crown have never been recovered.
The ship’s sensors kicked in one by one once the ship exited the jump wormhole. Reigou Kiriyki scanned his surroundings with interest, this being his first visit to the Bersyrim system. In fact, none of Kiriyki’s acquaintances had visited this system. Not that it was deserted, far from it: the Bersyrim system lies deep within Amarr space and has two large habitable planets, both teeming with life. No, Bersyrim, as most systems in the Shi-Karid sector, is a restricted area. A visa is needed to enter those systems and acquiring a visa is easier said than done. Kiriyki got his from a contact he knew within the huge Nurtura company and then only because his contact sorely needed someone to ferry vital agricultural machinery to Bersyrim III. As other large Amarrian companies, Nurtura had to depend on foreign traders for much of its trade, even within the Amarr Empire itself. Despite being the largest of the empires their trade fleet was not up to par and Caldari and Gallentean traders poured into the Amarr Empire in growing numbers, in spite of the many trade restrictions. Kiriyki set his course for Bersyrim III.
Bersyrim III, like the other inhabited planet Odra, was among the largest exporters of agricultural products in the whole Amarr Empire and Kiriyki was excited to get the change to do business there. Getting the visa not only presented additional business opportunities, but also gave his career in Jaasinen Inc. a big boost, now that he alone of all the corporation’s members was able to travel to this restricted part of the Amarr Empire. Kiriyki had also been instrumental in getting Nurtura to buy the Caldari-made agricultural machinery in the first place, the very same machinery he was now carrying in his cargo hold to its final destination on Bersyrim III. Kiriyki dreamed of being made head of the Amarr trading branch. He had spent years gaining the trust of the Amarrians and building up a network of contacts and felt the time had come for some recognition for his efforts.
Kiriyki forced himself to start thinking about his current assignment, the future would take care of his endorsements. Right now the priority was to get the cargo safe and sound to Bersyrim III, collect the reward for a mission accomplished and then maybe he would engage in some trading on his own. Certainly, agricultural products were definitely cheaper here at their source than almost anywhere else and as long as he was willing to carry them around for awhile Kiriyki could make a killer deal here. No wonder the visas leading to the Amarr agricultural planets were regarded as gateways to fabulous riches.
While traveling here Kiriyki had made an effort to get as much information as he could on the Bersyrim system. He prided himself in being very thorough when it came to places and people connected to his business.
Bersyrim was an old system, colonized more than 500 years ago. It lay in the fief of the Kador-family and was the gem of the sector. Bersyrim III landmass was mainly vast plains, making it ideal for large-scale food production. The planet exported huge amounts of agricultural products each year, but only a handful of its inhabitants had any extra-terrestrial connections; most of the populace lived and bred and died totally oblivious to anything else but their own surroundings. Kiriyki knew that this wasn’t a unique case - it applied to most planetary populations everywhere. After all, the space economy was only a fraction of the planetary economy.
Most of the urban settlements, which were not many, had developed around huge Holder citadels, the cornerstone of imperial control on the planet. The towns were a mish-mash of large stone buildings, tottering wooden huts and raggedy tent-houses, with every nook and cranny chock full of people. Most of the citizens were Ni-Kunni craftsmen, sprinkled with true Amarrian artisans and freed Minmatar slaves. Out on the plains the land was divided between a handful of Amarr Holders, each ruling over a vast estate of up to 100,000 acres or more. The land was worked by slaves, mostly of Minmatar origin, who lived in small villages surrounded in all directions by an ocean of cornfields. All settlements, both the towns and the villages, were heavily fortified to keep the marauding Chikra nomads out. The Chikra people were descendants of a group of the first settlers on the planet that cut themselves off from the other settlers and headed out into the wilderness. They developed a nomadic lifestyle and still roam the planet in small packs, to the annoyance of the Amarrian authorities.
Yet even if Kiriyki, with his extensive experience and deep knowledge of the areas he did business in, he would be the first to admit that he knew only a tiny fraction of the history of the world of EVE. Sure, now he knew plenty about Bersyrim III, but it was only one world of many thousands, each with its own unique history, customs, stories and people.
While browsing the local news channel on Bersyrim III station as his ship was being loaded with newly-purchased products Kiriyki came across a small report about a discovery of a cache of cyber implants floating in space near Odra station but station workers, no doubt the remnants of a stubborn freighter unwilling to yield to pursuing pirates. When Kiriyki read the name of the cyber implants: Double-Edged Hydra Compartmentalizer, his heart missed a beat. No wonder the freighter had been stubborn, these implants were among the rarest and most sought after Amarrian artifacts in the Caldari State. Kiriyki fervently hoped the news was true: a horde of super-rare cyber implants for sale! While he waited impatiently for the loading procedure to finish he noticed his hands shaking. Odra station was just one warp away…
Warm, white, comfortable, nothing. This was all it knew. The concept of self did not yet exist for the thing floating in maturation tube 30316, nor did the concept of what was about to happen.
A flash, blinding and intense. Something new. Stimulus.
A flood of stimulus. Pain? It didn't know the meaning of pain yet. This was different from before. The sensation intensified. He felt it emanating from the back of his head, and wondered what a head was. Then it came to him, a vague idea of his form. He opened his mouth, and it filled with... something... that he inhaled. Something he shouldn't have inhaled. He felt himself choking, his mind flooded with things that weren't there before.
He reached out, and his hands touched glass. He pressed against it, and struggled, but his movements were dampened by something thick, gelatinous. He was in a liquid. Was he drowning? No, he was all right, and his name was Galen. How did he know this, he wondered. Where did this fact come from? His eyes opened for the first time, and he glanced about. The wet thing he was in stung his eyes slightly, but through it he could see, in blinding detail. A room… with someone in it, standing before him… behind the glass. A doctor. What's a doctor, he wondered briefly, before the relevant data arrived in his brain through the neural jack at the base of his skull.
Minutes later, Galen Doradoux knew who he was, and what was going on. His consciousness fully integrated, he floated patiently in the gelatinous biomimetic suspension. Obviously, the Vaarkota deal had fallen through with catastrophic consequences, he thought. The jelly began to recede as it drained down through the bottom of the maturation capsule. The glass slid upwards, and he staggered out, disoriented, falling to his knees and vomiting a large quantity of the jelly he swallowed minutes earlier. The doctor helpfully put a robe over him and handed him a few towels. He gathered himself.
"Mr. Doradoux, as part of your replica contract, it is my solemn duty to inform you that your previous self was lost in a firefight in the Xygia system. The perpetrator, a member of the Vaarkota cartel, has been arrested, and there are numerous papers for you to sign regarding the incident", recited the doctor, and Galen nodded. This wasn't the first time, and it certainly wouldn't be the last. His line of work ensured that. He didn't mind the dying so much as the paperwork.
The doctor continued. "You'll be glad to know that the integration process went very well, and only slight synaptic degradation was encountered. We hope you will continue using the services of the Vivant Clone Repositories." Galen concentrated, and sighed with relief as he managed to quickly recollect the facts he absorbed after picking up the cruiser class pilot training pack a week before. The doctor thrust a data-pad in front of him, and Galen took it, placing his signature on the contract that ensured another clone to be ready for him when he next needed it.
He wrapped the bathrobe tightly around himself. "I know my way to the showers, doctor. Thank you for your assistance.”
Once upon a time every nation had high hopes regarding the future of the neural boosters. Many believed they were the next natural step for humankind in improving itself. Each of the empires started their own booster research, dreaming of creating a wonder brew that would propel their subjects to greatness. These dreams came crashing down one day when it was discovered that neural boosters had some very unfortunate side-effects that turned them in a heartbeat into public health hazards.
One of the less well-known booster research firms was that owned and run by Igil Sarpati, a competent Gallente scientist. Sarpati’s firm, simply named Sarpatis, was contracted by the Gallente Federation to lead booster research. When the Federation banned boosters following the discovery of the fatal side-effects the rug was pulled from beneath the company’s feet and it quickly went under, sharing the fate of almost all other companies that built their operation on boosters. Few years after the company closure Igil Sarpati died. The Sarpati family passed into obscurity, seemingly destined to go down in history, alongside thousands of others, as failures.
Igil's adopted child, a Caldari named Virge Salvador Sarpati, became the head of the family after his father's death. He grew up in the shadow of his father's failure and this experience marked him for life. In time he founded his own company and called it Serpentis, an older form of the family name and a tribute to his late fathers' company. The only assets of Sarpati junior were the old booster formulas of his father, but as boosters were banned the formulas were worthless. So instead of going into the pharmaceutical business like his father V. Salvador Sarpati (as he likes to be called) instead focused on hi-tech R&D. Slowly, but surely, the company gained strength. Although it began nominally as a Gallente-based company it had from early on a very cosmopolitan character, considering itself unattached to any government. Due to his past experience Salvador became increasingly antagonistic to the Gallente, to the point where he only allowed Caldari corporations and Caldari officials access to the higher echelons of his organization.
Three decades ago Sarpati bought a system in the Phoenix constellation and named it Serpentis. He built himself a magnificent space station orbiting Serpentis Prime and runs his company from there. As his power and wealth grew he has expanded the territory he owns and now runs a dozen space installations around the world of EVE. Although all the Serpentis stations are officially termed research stations they have in time grown into notorious pirate havens. Sarpati himself encouraged such development, hinting at a more sinister long-term strategy than offered by his innocent-looking company. Indeed, it has been rumored that once Sarpati had set himself up he dusted off his father’s old formulas and turned his research facilities on them.
Opening one’s stations to pirates and outlaws can easily become a double-edged sword, but Sarpati was smart enough to get himself a protection. He made a deal with the Angel cartel that it would provide protection for all Serpentis stations. In return the Angels would get a cut of all trade on these stations and access to any research breakthroughs the Serpentis corporation makes. This deal has been so lucrative for both parties that the Angels have devoted their entire Guardian Angels division to protecting Serpentis space and the Sarpati family lives in unprecedented luxury. The DED is not wholly unaware of the situation and has made numerous attempts to close some of Sarpati’s establishments, but to no avail.
V. Salvador Sarpati has gathered a small retinue to dwell at his side in the Serpentis system. There they spend their days in idle games and frolics without a worry in the world. Sarpati himself is an active participant, although his boundless energy and ambition allows him to break out of it every once in a while to take care of his small empire. The more frivolous of Sarpati's retinue live with him, while the more headstrong are scattered around the other Serpentis stations running things. Only one member of Sarpati's adopted family, his sister Santimona, has rejected both the indolent life at Serpentis Prime as well as Sarpati's close links to the underworld. She is now a member of the Sisters of EVE order and mocks her brother and his lifestyle at every opportunity, calling him King Serpent and Serpentis Prime his royal court.
Torrinos system lay on the outskirts of Caldari space. Beyond there were increasingly less secure areas until one reached the Amarrian border zones some seven jumps distance. Although this route was not an official linkage point between the two empires it was still a popular path for smugglers or those wishing to travel outside the main routes. This was the reason why Maya had positioned herself here sporting her newly acquired cargo scanner, courtesy of the Custom license she’d bought from the Caldari state. Many of her friends had done this before her and all agreed that Torrinos system offered some good pickings. All she had to do was to sniff out some illegal or contraband goods and report her findings - she would then receive a part of the fine imposed on the offender by the authorities.
The cargo scanner aligned itself with the nearest of the four frigates and started its scanning process. But before it could finish it sputtered to a halt and reported a failed scan. At first Maya was sure she’d done something incorrectly, before realizing that the target ship had used an anti-scanning device on her to counter her scanning efforts. The four frigates suddenly veered off their course and now headed directly towards her. The menacing advance of the smugglers gave Maya the urge to panic and do something reckless, but she managed to get her emotions under control. The smugglers had not opened fire on her yet. Maybe they were just trying to scare her off. The leading smuggler, the one that thwarted her scanning attempt, established a com-link to her, automatically creating a new channel for them to communicate over:
After the Jovians introduced capsule technology to the empires several methods have been tried out regarding the visual presentation of the surroundings to the captain enclosed in his capsule. The first method tried, and the one the Jovians first used (and sometimes still do), was to use the data from wide range of scanners to paint a realistic view of the ship’s surroundings in the mind of the captain. But after intensive experimentations it was discovered that this caused severe nausea and disorientation for most captains not of Jove origin. Other high-tech methods also had to be discarded for the same or similar reasons. In the end, the empires discovered that simple cameras directly connected to small screens inside the captain’s helmet were the best solution. At first these cameras were mounted on the hull of the ship, but with the advent of electrical energy weapons these cameras became too vulnerable to damage from electrical charges.
The Gallenteans were the first to experiment with cameras mounted on drones hovering around the ship. They first developed this method when researching more efficient point-defense weapons. This hovering method later caught on with the other races and is now common practice, with all the empires manufacturing their own types of camera drones, all based on the same principle. At first only one camera drone was used, but today they are two, for stereoscopic vision. The camera drones are suspended some distance from the ship. They attach to the ship by using a combination of an attractive magnetic force and repulsive electromechanical force, this also allows them to orbit the ship at any desired position. This means that the drones never need replenishing or refueling.
The camera drone can be commanded through the captain’s neural link. This gives the captain tremendous ability to get a clear view of his environment in a quick and comprehensive manner. By stationing the camera drone some distance from the ship the drone is not as susceptible to weapon outbursts hitting the ship’s hull. The drone can still be destroyed, either by accident, such as passing debris or stray shot, or on purpose. All ships have abundant supplies of spare camera drones stored away for such occasions and the captain has to be fairly clueless to run out of camera drones. The fact that the drones are stationed outside the ship’s shield makes it impractical to try to protect them. Simply storing lots and lots of them is much easier, as they’re very cheap.
When the ship uses a stargate the camera drone needs to move back into the ship when jumping. It re-emerges as soon as the ship exits the jump. This does not apply to warping, when the ship travels between planets within a solar system.
Although the camera drone serves as the main visual tool of the captain cameras have been used in more ways. Some missiles sport a camera in their nose, allowing the captain to see directly where the missile lands.
In the Amarr tongue, their name is Imud Hubrau, or "Beast of Heaven." To the Gallente, they are known as Soltueurs, or "Sun Slayers." The collective name for these behemoths is Titans, the largest spacefaring vessels ever constructed. The sheer cost in resources, manpower and time, as well as the necessary technological knowledge, makes construction of a Titan-class vessel a venture only empires can usually fathom. Some of these mammoth vessels have taken decades to assemble. Many are over a century old themselves (the three mammoth Jovian motherships, the first ships built on the scale of titans, have origins pre-dating modern space travel). They are maintained with constant upgrades, and at any given time, one of the three is out of commission while undergoing retrofits.
Their value is indescribable. Functioning for those who own them as a mobile base of operations as well as a flagship, Titans turn the tides of war with their mere presence. Aside from their blistering armament and many-metres-thick armour, they boast the ability to transport entire fleets within their hulks across entire star systems. Their mind-boggling mass can cause small ships to become trapped in the gravity bow-wave before them. A few of these vessels are massive enough that their presence affects planetary tidal patterns. One notable incident occurred on the small agricultural world of Goral, where a Gallente Titan moving into orbit caused an abrupt shift in tides, which flooded crop fields and farmland. The decrease in food production meant that the entire system, which depended on Goral for food stock, had to be supplied by merchants or face starvation. Since then, Titan navigation systems have been programmed with fail-safes to prevent them from approaching a planet so closely.
The construction of a Titan has, in recent years, become an option available to more than just the richest of empires. With the advent of exploration, new resource-rich worlds have been discovered. For the construction of an Amarr corporation’s newest fleet addition, a lush, tropical moon was decided as a prime source for resource extraction. After decades of aggressive strip-mining, the moon's surface had been mostly torn away. At the cost of tens of thousands of Minmatar slave lives, the Titan was complete, leaving the moon a devastated, tectonically unstable hell.
Victor Sistré idly watched the traffic around Manatirid station on his radar. Most of the cargo freighters were Gallentean ones, but the police vessels were from the Amarr Empire. Manatirid station was located in one of the few Amarrian systems close to Gallente space, and as such acted as a trade post between the two empires. Victor was on a mission for his corporation, searching for rare minerals to use in the corporation’s shields production.
A ship undocked from Manatirid station and Victor immediately noticed the radar signal depicting the newcomer as hostile. It was a ship from Jaasinen Inc., a rival company of Victor’s Canout corporation. The two corporations were at war, their dispute revolving around a system far from Victor’s current location. Even if the Amarrian system was a lawful place the fact that the two corporations were officially in a state of war meant that Victor was a free target for the Jaasinen frigate fast approaching.
Victor quickly activated his warp drive, having no intention of fighting the Caldari frigate on his lightly armed ship. But before he could finish selecting a destination for his warp he noticed that the Caldari had scrambled him, preventing him from entering warp. Victor veered his ship away from the Caldar vessel, the range still a good 10 kilometers. His ship computer registered a couple of missiles being launched, but their e.t.a. was still some seconds off. In the meantime Victor activated his anti-scrambling unit - due to the strength of the Caldari scrambler it would take a full minute to de-scramble the warp drive. Ruefully reflecting on frail defenses, Victor longed for his heavily battle-equipped Incursus frigate.
Just before the two Caldari missiles slammed into Victor’s ship he launched a couple of salvos of his best counter-measures in response, hoping to foil the missiles. One of the missiles was fooled into exploding its warhead some way from the hull, but the other stayed its course and smacked into Victor’s ship. The shield managed to absorb a fair deal of the damage, but to Victor’s dismay the powerful missile had still managed to breach the armored hull.
Two more missiles were launched from the Caldari ship and Victor wondered how many the Caldari captain had. He himself had already spent his best counter-measures and he had no anti-missile missiles or point-defense weapons to deal with the approaching menace. Victor resolved to dug deeply into his power reserves by boosting his shield a couple of times, hoping it could sustain the damage from the missiles. While waiting for the impact Victor zoomed his camera onto the missiles and noticed their brand - each of these missiles was almost as expensive as the whole of Victor’s ship. It was obvious that the Caldari was out to destroy him for a bigger reason than just to loot his cargo hold.
The missiles crashed into Victor’s ship, jolting it around. Victor could feel the impact in his own bones, a sure sign that the ship had received major damage. A quick survey of his ship computer revealed several hull breaches and some structural damage. The hydraulic system was out-of-order and his oxygen level was dropping fast, indicating a hole in an oxygen tank.
The Caldari ship, being considerably faster than Victor’s ship after having activated its afterburner, was now close enough to open fire with its short-range lasers. The last missile impact had severely reduced the strength of Victor’s shields and his power level was low. The anti-scrambler still needed 20 seconds to complete the de-scrambling and it was eating into Victor’s remaining power supply. Victor forlornly realized that the Caldari had expended almost no power so far - only on the warp scrambler and a small amount on the afterburner. Only now was he using energy weapons against Victor.
As Victor’s capsule was ejected from his disintegrating ship, Victor wondered whether skipping the anti-scrambling and burning for the station might have been a wiser choice in the situation.
The space industry is looming ever larger in the minds of those inhabiting the world of EVE. Not so many decades ago the industry provided a living for only a handful of people, but today the number has risen to tens or hundred of thousands. Every day sees new companies being formed in every corner of the world; companies that dream of taking space by storm. A typical company of this sort is DioCore.
Founded by two brothers some five years ago DioCore remained for some time a company bereft of funds, staff or future. But the brothers didn?t sit idle during this time - they gained experience in operating space crafts, skills in dealing with people and established some important contacts. DioCore?s main activity was in the field of blueprint research. The founding brothers had many revolutionary ideas regarding drones and wished to incorporate these ideas into blueprints.
In the end they managed to attract the attention of the investment firm MindChill, a Gallente-based venture capitalists company that focused on budding space companies. With the aid of MindChill, DioCore finally managed to get their operation into gear and finance their first research facility in space, with two more following. With the money from MindChill the DioCore brothers thought they were made. A few early blueprints were promising, but these failed to materialize into anything more substantial. Soon, lack of funds threatened the continued existence of the company. Yet the brothers were unwilling to give up, as they knew their breakthrough project was on the horizon. This breakthrough project attracted the attention of potential customers - some very big - and the DioCore directors managed to sign a deal with some of them, but all with the condition that DioCore finished researching their blueprint first.
Looking for venture capital to fund the company until the massive deal went through, a dark plot was being crafted in backrooms. MindChill, because of the earlier involvement in the company, had some first-hand knowledge about the problems facing DioCore and took on the task of leading the raising of new capital. All seemed well and the shareholders were at peace. Several weeks passed, and the DioCore directors put ever more pressure on MindChill to finish the funding. MindChill responded that major deals were being made and that capital would be just around the corner. But their real intentions were more sinister and predatory. Rumors started to spread that DioCore was having cash flow problems. Several investors wanted out and behind the curtains MindChill was buying DioCore stock at wholesale prices. The longer MindChill waited to finish the fund-raising deals, the better their position became for buying more shares. An emergency meeting was held at DioCore headquarters to get to the bottom of the situation and there the true intentions of MindChill became evident. As DioCore was now on the verge of bankruptcy, MindChill put forth an offer that DioCore was in no position to decline. It would give MindChill a majority in the corporation for a very small sum, but just enough to let them finish the research project and land the drone deal, but with MindChill then reaping the profit from it. Not giving up so easily, DioCore directors came up with a plan. Now that the offer from MindChill was at such an incredibly low price, it was easy to raise enough capital to counter it. A private investor, backed up by the directors at DioCore, came in with an alternative deal. The new deal would keep the shares within the company, but at the same time dilute MindChill share severely since the price was so low.
But the trouble was not over, as the board members at DioCore still had to vote between the two deals. The problem was that MindChill had a member on the board, Jon Mondo, a famous Gallentean venture capitalist. Mondo had been busy gathering support from other board members for his own deal and no one knew which deal would come out on top. This caused severe tension and the battle for DioCore was now reaching a dangerous level. Mercenaries were hired to guard major DioCore facilities from possible sabotage and DioCore directors only moved between systems with highly trained fighter escorts acting as bodyguards. Every vote was now worth more than the life of the person behind it. The board meeting was finally held at DioCore headquarters under military style security. The vote went a close call 5-6 in favor of the private investor, and DioCore was no longer under the threat of takeover.
Three months passed, and DioCore struck gold with their highly developed drone product lines. Today DioCore is a prominent company and is frequently traded on the stock market, being considered a solid long-term investment.
Captain Ieris Hvik steered her small frigate into another loop, patiently waiting for the miner to disembark from Ethernity II station, a small blip on the edge of her radar. This particular miner promised some good yield, judging by his track record. He had great standings with the corporations around here – all the better for refining – and he was a fast and efficient miner.
At last the bronze colored Navitas-class frigate slid out of the station. The miner adjusted the course of his set, aligning it towards the asteroid belt between Ethernity II and Ethernity III. Few seconds later his warp drive kicked in and in a heartbeat he had disappeared in a bluish flash. Hvik counted to 30 before activating her own warp drive - no need to get the miner paranoid by getting too close on his tail.
Once in the asteroid belt Hvik quickly assessed the situation. She picked up the signal emanating from the tracking bug on the miner a few hundred kilometers off and adjusted her course accordingly. Once within scanning range she matched her speed to that of the miner. The miner was already scanning asteroids, but hadn’t yet deployed his mining drones. This, and the fact that he was still heading full speed deeper into the asteroid belt, indicated that he was looking for some specific minerals, undoubtedly some rare ones. Hvik chuckled to herself, pleased with her selection. Now, all she had to do was wait and let the miner do her work for her.
Hvik had started out as a miner, but quickly found that she didn’t have the patience for it. But before she quit she’d established some pretty good contacts in the mining industry and was able to off-load minerals at good prices. So it was natural that instead of becoming a mercenary for hire or a pirate chasing freighters, she would focus on miners - preying on them in isolated areas and loot their minerals. It didn’t take all that much combat skill as long as one refrained from attacking groups of miners. And there were always a lot of lone miners in the outer regions, dreaming of striking gold with no one to share with. Hvik was happy to oblige, the miners didn’t have to share with her - she’d take it all.
Hvik’s console beeped, dragging her from her reverie. The miner was deploying his drones. Hvik stretched in her cocoon, setting the ship on stand-by, preparing it to haul in the load of the day.
The world of EVE is moving ever closer to a fully integrated market economy, where the thousands of inhabited planets, moons, asteroids and their accompanying space stations are able to do business on a galactic scale. Today the world is divided into numerous market regions, most spanning several constellations. Wares being sold or sought after within the market region are accessible for trade anywhere within the region. The cornerstone of the market economy is the inter-stellar communication method coupled with a reliable and efficient way for striking a deal over long distance.
Before instantaneous communication from one star to another came into being, trading over long distances (between solar systems) was hazardous and time-consuming. Frauds and swindlers were in abundance, making trades with strangers highly risky. The time it took to find out what stations in nearby solar systems had on offer or demanded, plus the time it then took to strike a deal and ship the products to and fro, stifled space commerce so much that it was almost non-existent. Only the adventures were willing to risk their assets and even their lives by pursuing space trading, but the potential riches involved urged people on and made them yearn for a quicker, easier way to do business between the stars. Thus, once inter-stellar communication devices arrived they spread out like an epidemic and inter-stellar commerce quickly followed in their wake.
At first, inter-stellar commerce was conducted in a haphazard sort of way, giving the frauds ample opportunities to cash in on the optimistic and naïve traders. It quickly became clear that instant communication between solar systems alone could not keep commerce clean. Every empire responded on their own, setting trade regulations, hiring special commerce inspectors and setting up secure trade houses. These efforts managed to create a fairly safe trade environment.
But once constellations and other regions started to set up a regional market network, where traders were able to view everything for sale anywhere in the region and put their own items up for sale, there arose the need for a centralized agency responsible for inter-stellar commerce. This is where the SCC - Secure Commerce Committee - came into being. As a division within the CONCORD the SCC is jointly run by the empires and thus ensures a safe and universally regulated trade environment. A joint initiative of the Minmatar Republic and the Jovian Empire have also ensured that the SCC, although under the control of the empires through the CONCORD, acts under the strictest neutrality codes, the same as the InterBus and other empire-run institutions. This is to ensure that all dealings are not only secure, but also secret, with no chance of governmental interference. The unfortunate by-product of this is that those acting on the wrong side of the law can just as easily do business with each other as anyone else.
The neural implant in Tiny’s brain registered increased stress signals. He was running out of time. What should have been a run-of-the-mill mission was turning into a fiasco. How many times had he shuttled Tonic-12 to his buddy Karlo? At least a dozen times. And never a hitch. But now he was running late, very late. All because of those bloody cops for raiding his usual pick-up place. He had to go all the way into the Great Wildlands to fetch the precious substance and his delivery window was only half an hour away. Not to mention, he was without his escort buddies. The bloody fools had gone on a mercenary mission in the outer regions somewhere. Being all by himself made Tiny nervous, adding even more to his already high tension.
Tiny cursed silently as he maneuvered his ship towards the stargate. He waited impatiently while the control station processed his jump request. He contemplated taking his chance of going through the Du Annes system to make up some lost time, but decided against it. It was too risky. The Decon-Sharuveil route was a detour, but more or less safe from any prying eyes. Finally, his jump permission came through and he fired up the thrusters on his cruiser to align the ship for the jump sequence.
Once in the Decon system Tiny started by scanning nearby space to see if anyone was lying in wait to ambush him. Nothing. Then he started the trek towards the Decon star gate. En route he calculated how much he stood to loose if he didn’t get the stuff to Karlo on time. Maybe 50 thousand. Not to mention that Karlo would get miffed, to say the least, and Karlo was his only agent within empire space that traded in smart drugs. It was a big loss, but he could cope. He would make it up to Karlo somehow and maybe he could find another buyer for the Tonic-12, though it was dangerous to cruise around with illegal stuff for a long period. Maybe he should stash it somewhere…
Deep in thought, Tiny performed the necessary navigational adjustments to keep his ship on the move. He made the last warp to the star gate; next destination: Sharuveil system and then just one more jump. It took Tiny a few seconds to notice the radar signal - a ship on the edge of his radar range. It was also moving towards the star gate, from the opposite direction. Tiny ran a ship scan once in range, in case it was a stray custom official or a DED snoop.
Mother of all creation! It was Adira Habi, the Amarrian scumbag that pod-killed him a few weeks back! Tiny shook with glee; he’d been looking for Habi ever since that incident, how fortunate to find him here, all by himself. Suddenly, Habi’s cruiser veered off course, obviously he had spotted Tiny. ‘What a coward,’ Tiny thought. Habi set the course for Decon IV and warped away before Tiny was in warp scrambler range. Tiny was about to warp after Habi when he remembered his Tonic-12 cargo and Karlo. ‘Ah, bugger that!’ he thought, turning away from the stargate to Sharuveil and prepared for a warp to Decon IV.
One of the many tasks facing the empires once they had established contact with each other was to set a universal time. Each of the empires naturally had their own calendar and clock, based more or less on the length of the day and year on their respective home planets. This made up for some serious confusion and it soon became apparent that some sort of a synchronized time keeping was needed so inter-racial communications could run smoothly.
Of course, basing this universal time on the calendar of one of the empires was out of the question, the other would never agree to it. So a new one had to be devised. The debates on the new calendar and clock soon boiled down to arguments between three main groups, the Arithmetics, the Traditionalists and the 25ers. The debate was initially conducted between scholars, which then put forth proposals for the politicians and the public to consider. The three main groups each drew their support from different fields of science and academics. The Arithmetics were mainly physicists and engineers, the Traditionalists were mostly historians and archeologists and the 25ers group consisted of biologists and sociologists.
The Arithmetics wanted the new calendar and clock to have nothing whatsoever to do with old planetary-based calendars, instead they wanted to base it entirely on mathematics. They claimed that the physics-oriented nature of the modern world demanded this. The Traditionalists said the only way to go was to base the new calendar as much as possible on the 24-hour, 365-day calendar favored by early post-collapse settlers. All the races, especially the Jovians and the Amarrians, had some data on the old calendar and by combining the data it could be remade more or less in its original form. Finally, the 25ers claimed that the only measurement worth considering in a space-faring age was that of the human body. The internal body clock of humans is close to 25 hours, and thus they wanted to base the new clock on that measurement.
During the long and arduous discussions numerous factions rose, declaring themselves champions of one cause or another. One of them, identifying themselves with the 25ers, was a small Gallentean grass-root organization led by an energetic young man by the name of Cerb Rausolle, although he preferred the pseudonym the Astrologer. Through the efforts of the Astrologer the 25ers gained great public support, spurred on by the surprisingly big network put into place by the Astrologer.
Instead of going the public way as the 25ers the Traditionalists had focused on the politicians, correctly as it turned out to be as it was they that had the final saying. When the final decision was made aboard the Jovian cruiser Yoiul the Traditionalists won comfortably. A day would be divided into 24 hours and the year 365 days with an additional day every 4 years, the same as the calendar of the early settlers. The date was set as 0 YC. The Yoiul Conference was held 111 years ago, so the current year is 111 YC.
The Astrologer was not to let his large organization network go to waste and soon found a new cause worthy of his attention. At that time space ship owners were required to pay huge amounts of money each year for their ship license. This was something that all the empires enforced as it provided a good deal of income for them, plus it meant that only the cream of the society could afford to be in space business. But this of course also hampered space trade and made it difficult for the average Joe to get into the business. The Astrologer and his organization (still called the 25ers) started lobbying for a change in the legislation. Since CONCORD was responsible for issuing ship licenses and collecting the license fees, it became the target of the demonstrations organized by the 25ers.
At first CONCORD ignored the protests, but as they became more serious it began taking notice. As it had been recently formed, CONCORD was concerned about the image it was projecting to the public and a committee was formed to handle the matter. As is often the case, things dragged on for months. All the while the Astrologer was planning more and more outrageous acts of protest, even going so far as to organize general strikes on some planets. The icing on the cake came during the first New Year celebration, celebrating 1 YC, at the headquarters of CONCORD. The Astrologer then managed to infiltrate the station’s defense perimeter with a lone, unmanned cargo ship filled with explosives, which he then promptly detonated outside the station in plain view of many of New Eden’s most prominent people. The Astrologer was careful not to blow the ship up so close as to injure any of the guests, but his message was heard loud and clear. Two months later new CONCORD legislation abolishing the license fees was passed by all the member states.
The Astrologer, now a fugitive after his stunt, quickly became a living legend. The 25ers organization was dismantled and the Astrologer lost his status as the champion of the people. But his name is not forgotten, nor that of the 25ers, and every now and then a new group is formed somewhere in the world of New Eden, proclaiming itself as the successor of the old 25ers, dreaming of reliving the times when the little men defeated the big guns.
Anyone who travels for a while around the world of EVE will sooner rather than later run into strange-looking ships that more likely than not will prove hostile. These ships with their aggressive spikes and multi-toned metal shine are the not-so-old relics of a mad scheme hatched to conquer the world. Today, this once glorious fleet is left to guard the ruins of a dynamic empire, the marvel of the world a century ago. Hailed as the perfect Utopian state it wasn’t until the gruesome tales of its ethical transgressions surfaced that it was brought down through a joint effort by all the major empires.
It is the norm whenever breakthroughs occur in the technological or geographical knowledge that some people manage through luck or foresight to make a fortune on the new knowledge. This is exactly what happened in the heady days of space exploration and colonization in the first few decades after first contact, when anyone with the means and the motives could set himself up as a space baron in a pocket of space somewhere outside empire territory.
One of these early tycoons was Sansha Kuvakei, a wealthy industrial mogul of Caldari origin. His family had made its fortune in armament manufacturing during the war with the Gallente Federation. Sansha soon showed himself to be an eccentric megalomaniac that dreamt of world conquest, no less. He saw the free-for-all colonizing of space that the empires advocated at the time as an ideal vehicle for his schemes and set out to carve himself a sizeable chunk of the systems available to the public. Sansha saw himself as a visionary for the new order soon to come and he attracted thousands of followers, attracted by his charm and promises for a better future for everyone. Soon Sansha had built himself a sizeable domain extending over several systems, with smaller pockets scattered around the known world. This foundation allowed Sansha to start his own armaments program, independent of all the other empires. For this he used the extensive knowledge his family had garnered throughout the years.
For years Sansha’s build-up program continued, gaining ever more momentum as his fame and fortune increased. Being on the forefront of space mining and trading his realm prospered and soon people were talking about Sansha’s Nation (as it was most commonly known as) as the new major player in galactic politics. Sansha used these resources ingeniously to create an image of himself as a new messiah and his domain as the Promised Land. But when Sansha himself started believing the hype heaped on him his already fragile mind conjured ever-stranger notions and plans.
One of these projects was to develop a method to amalgamate the recently introduced Jovian capsule technology with existing brain implants, most of them illegal, to create men with the thoroughness of a computer and the ingenuity of humans. People that would be completely loyal and dedicated, yet creative enough to handle complex and delicate situations. These inhuman researches naturally required test subjects, Sansha acquired these from the Amarr Empire in the form of Minmatar slaves. The Amarrians were eager to learn of any new techniques to be used to control their large slave population and gave Sansha whatever support he required. There has always been strong suspicion that Sansha received substantial support from others too, but if and who these shadowy allies were has never become public knowledge.
Sansha’s dream was that these zombie-like creatures could be used as soldiers and guards, thus freeing humans to pursue more peaceful and productive lifestyles. He also experimented with ship crews and captains, as he regarded space ships to be both boring and dangerous, and thus ideally suited for his creatures. Soon, all armed forces and space ship personnel employed by Sansha’s Nation had been replaced by an easily controlled armada of True Slaves, as those that had been implanted with Sansha’s technology became known as. In his warped mind Sansha believed his acts to be of the good for mankind.
It was only a matter of time before the truth of this new technology was revealed to the public. The reactions were immediate and intense. One by one the empires condemned Sansha, the Amarr Empire among them, as they didn’t want to be ostracized by the other empires. But Sansha refused to see the error of his ways, declaring that the other empires were too narrow-minded and primitive to fathom what a great genius he was. Sansha continued to put his mind-curbing devices into people unabated and even started some even more outrageous projects in the same vein. In the end, the other empires, with the Gallente Federation at the forefront, decided not to stand idly by any longer and attacked Sansha’s Nation.
Since the revelation of Sansha’s twisted experiments came out into the open, the Nation had lost most of its inhabitants. Only the fanatics and the True Slaves remained. They managed to hold out for some months, but in the end Sansha’s little empire crumbled. His forces were scattered to the wind and all his factories and space installations destroyed. Sansha himself was killed during the final assault on his stronghold. But even if the majority of his fleet had been defeated, many of them managed to slip away during the chaos and hide. These are the ships that still today attack unwary travelers in the vicinity of the old realm of Sansha’s Nation. Steered by True Slaves they have never given up the fight that Sansha sent them out for, a disturbing tribute to their late master.
After Sansha was defeated the empires debated what to do with the systems he controlled. Finally, they were distributed between the empires, but it’s attesting to the lasting effects of Sansha that almost none of them have been settled in the decades since his collapse.
As a final note, there are those that claim that Sansha is still alive and well. These conspiracy theorists say that before he died Sansha hid a number of clones of himself in secret locations the empires never discovered, and after he was killed he was resurrected in one of them. The same rumors also state that Sansha is still up to his old tricks creating True Slaves and building ships, hidden amongst the rubble in some remote corner of his old domain. They argue that the number of True Slave ships destroyed in recent years is far greater than the number of ships that remained at the time Sansha’s empire collapsed. As with most good conspiracy theories, it is hard to prove or disprove any of these claims.
The Ammatars are descendants of Minmatars that collaborated with the Amarrians during the latter occupation of the Minmatar worlds. When the Amarrians were thrown out during the Minmatar Rebellion their collaborators fled with them. The Amarrians helped their Minmatar allies to settle in a few systems not far from the newly formed Minmatar Republic. The Ammatars regard themselves as the true rulers of the Minmatars, mainly based around the fact that a fair proportion of the old Minmatar aristocracy, or tribal leaders, were among them. In this vein they named their domain San Matar, meaning ‘true home’.
The term Ammatar was first used by the Gallenteans to distinguish between the two groups. Out of convenience even the Ammatars themselves started using it, stating that, with the help of the Amarrians, they’ve progressed beyond the old social structure of the Minmatar tribes. Indeed, the Ammatars have very deliberately abolished many age-old traditions of the Minmatar tribal society and embraced some Amarrian ones instead.
The Ammatar domain, San Matar, is semi-autonomous. The Ammatar rulers have full domestic control, but their foreign policies must be have the consent of the Amarrians and their military forces are, nominally, under the authority of the Amarrians. The relationship of the two has been remarkably smooth in the past, with no serious quarrels.
The San Matar government is structured the same way as any other province of the Amarr Empire, with a governor at the head and district officials beneath him prescribing over the various departments of state. These heads of state are always Ammatar, although the governor himself traditionally is an Amarrian, and acts as the supreme representative of the Amarr Empire. As is to be expected not all Ammatars are eager for constant warfare with the Minmatar Republic. Those who are the most belligerent of them often feel that the Ammatar state is doing too little so they have formed a group of their own to fight the Minmatars. In a sense this group is a direct response to the independent rebel groups the Minmatar have and the guerilla tactics employed by either side are similar.
Since its inauguration San Matar has been in a constant struggle with the Minmatar Republic. Both states have expanded considerably in the last decades and now border on each other in numerous places. The Republic, backed by the Gallente Federation, had the upper hand for a while, forcing the Amarr Empire to repeatedly come to the aid of their allies, but in recent years the tables have been turning and the Ammatar have managed to set up military installations and space stations right under the Republic’s nose
Broad speculation existed for many years on where the Ammatar got the support for these conquests, as the Amarr traditionally were only willing to aid the Ammatars when the latter were under direct threat. Though nothing has been conclusively proven, it is widely whispered that for decades the Caldari provided clandestine support to the Ammatar in exchange for the promise of mineral rights to the rich territories being battled over. These allegations were a frequent diplomatic sticking point between the Caldari and the Minmatar, and the mere mention of them rankles both sides to this day.
The Spider Miner drone is the most common mining drone in use today. It is manufactured by the Caldari industry giant Ishukone and is readily available throughout the world of EVE. It is not the best mining drone out there, but it is cheap and reliable, which explains it's success. The Spider Miner uses cheap laser technology to accomplish its task. The laser beam fulfills three essential tasks: extraction, transport and classfication of minerals. First of all it vaporizes the minerals on the surface of the asteroids where they form a charged plasma gas. Secondly, the laser beam itself is shaped as a cylindrical beam. By pulsating the laser amplitude, a rotating magnetic field is induced on the cylindrical surface. This acts as a 'screw' shaped magnet on the plasma particles, that get sucked up inside the cylindrical laser tube. Due to the different mass/charge ration of the atoms, the particle beam is diffused, like a ray of light through a prism. This enables the drone to sort and accumulate the different minerals. Obviously, a lot of the vaporized minerals actually fall outside the beam and are thus wasted, but the benefits and ease of use of the drone outweights this waste for most practical purposes.
The spider miner is agile and has a good range, allowing the controller to travel up to a few kilometers (depending on the density of the asteroid field) and still recall it. Experienced miners frequently use two or more mining drone teams at once, allowing them to leapfrog from one asteroid to the next, constantly scanning for suitable asteroids to mine while his teams are busy carving up another one somewhere else.
What a stroke of luck! Burki ‘Tiny’ Trom relaxed as his cruiser made the last maneuvers through the docking bay doors of the Minmatar station. He had been looking for a training kit for Entwined Shield Systems for a week now and had finally found it here in this half-ass market zone deep within the Republic. If it weren’t for his acquaintance in the Republic’s ministry of trade he would have never thought of looking in this obscure service station in the Nifflung system. But once again this only proved that if you wanted to get your hands on those rare and precious items you had to be prepared to look in unorthodox places.
Tiny had already made the necessary preparations, last week he finished training Advanced Ocular ECM, the pre-requisite for ESS, and he had stocked up on stims specially designed to boost his memory faculties for faster training. Pity to have to come all this way just for an item stored in computer form. He had asked them to upload it to him as was the norm, but no, these primitive peasants demanded he came in person to collect it. Oh well, at least he was here now. Besides, Tiny knew of a rich mineral seam in a nearby asteroid field. Wasn’t it ideal to spend the idle time while expanding his knowledge to search for the mother load of all mother loads?
Tiny didn’t spend any more time on the station than absolutely necessary, so few minutes later he was back in space. And what do you know? It seemed three space cowboys were laying in wait for him, a cruiser and a couple of menacing frigates. Great. Tiny’s communication device sputtered into action: ‘OK, fella. We’ve got you covered. Now be a smart boy and jettison whatever you have in your cargo hold and no harm will come to your precious cruiser.’ Tiny ran some profile scans on the three ships closing in on him. As he thought, pirate scum! Well, this wasn’t their lucky day. Tiny sent a reply: ‘Sorry, guys. No can do. I suggest you turn and leave before I become inclined to inflict some serious unpleasantries on your sorry asses.’ Tiny imagined the sneers his reply was getting from the gung-ho gangsters and smiled when his radar registered what he knew all along was out there. Three small dots blinked into existence, cordoned around the cowboys. All cruisers. With cloaking devices. It didn’t take long until the only sign left of the pirates’ presence was the residue from their warp drives as they fled. Before they’d warped Tiny sent them one final farewell message: ‘Heavily armed amigos, never to leave home without them!’ Then he laughed and paged his comrades: ‘Lets go!’
The theory and technology behind jump gates opened up a whole new era in the history of mankind and is readily accepted as being one of the most important discoveries of all times. Jump gates have now been in usage for centuries and new versions appear regularly that make them more sophisticated and safe. Even if the functions of jump gates are well known from a theoretical point of view, there still remain a lot of unanswered questions about the fundamentals of dimensional inter-connections. Naturally, many theories exist on the subject, but none are comprehensive enough to fully explain how the universe is divided into many dimensions and the connections between them, some also touch upon the subject of hyperspace, an alternative plain in another dimension. About the only statement these theories agree upon is that these issues are definitely not as simple as they seem on the surface.
Every now and then some unexplained events have occurred when a ship jumps through a jump gate, but these have been so few and far between that they’ve always been put down to accidents or faulty data. In recent months strange incidents in the barren and unpopulated systems near the hub of the known world have had people starting to question the reliability of jump gates and wonder whether humans opened Pandora’s box when they started using them.
What finally caught the attention of the media and, hence, the public, was the disappearance of the Gallentean Senator Hubert Caissor along with his family and his fortune in the ship Peralles en route to a new post as ambassador to the Amarrians. The Peralles entered a jump gate in the Dom-Aphis system between Amarr and Gallente space. Its destination was the jump gate in the Iderion system close by, but it never re-appeared there. What makes this even more of a puzzle is that the control station at Iderion jump gate received notification that a ship was incoming, showing all the right signs, yet no ship exited the jump gate. What is more, this notification is received at the exact same time every day, with the same result: no ship appearing even if all the signs indicate that a ship is about to come through the jump gate.
Since the Peralles incident stories of other similar incidents have surfaced, all within the same region. These stories, some no more than unsubstantiated rumors, all tell tales of disappearing ships, strange disturbances while jumping, ghostly echoes and images and unsettling time shifts in the vicinity of jump gates. The empires have started an inquiry into the matter, but still no rational explanation of the phenomenon has been offered.
In the competitive space trader community the only thing that often stands between riches and bankruptcy is knowing the right people in the right places. On many stations only some basic trade goods are available unless the trader knows the right person on the station to deal with, in case some special goods would become available. If this person happens to have underworld connections these goods could be of illegal nature; if the person has connections with the military it might offer prototype equipment, and so on. There are even whole areas of space that are only accessible to those with the right contacts.
Like in any lone of business states and companies try their best to keep a close tab on space commerce in order to maintain what monopolies they may enjoy. The few windows this leaves for outsiders are thus highly coveted and fought over. For even if there’s plenty of trade deals to be made on the free market it is only through contacts that traders can expect to gain access to the those rare and expensive items that pave the road to riches.
These contacts come in every shape and form, some are sought for the information and access to higher levels they present, others for their exotic or powerful items they proffer, and others still for some trade concessions or interesting missions they provide.
One of the big company employees who is known for his willingness to dabble a little on the side with freelancers is Pekki Mataken, a sector manager for the Kaalakiota Corporation. Residing in the Saatuban system, an economic nexus for the surrounding systems, he has established a reputation for offering fair and prosperous trade deals to those close with the KK. And those that find favor with the shrewd Caldari can expect to be offered a chance to link up with people even higher in the corps’ hierarchy. But in the same vein, those who deal unfairly with him quickly lose his favor and find themselves out in the cold.
In the early days of space flight ages ago it served no other purpose than being the means of travel between two planets. But in the last decades space travel has become much more. Thousands of people now live most of their lives solely in space, calling some space station their home instead of a planet, or a country. Space stations have increased in size, having grown into full-fledged habitats with food production units and factories able to satisfy every need of the populace.
Naturally, these cities in space require huge amount of materials and minerals to sustain and support themselves. If they’re lucky enough to orbit a populated planet they are seldom in want of anything, but others must fend for themselves. Planetary mining of uninhabited planets and moons is vitally important for any manufacturing station that wants to compete on equal footing. Although such stations do exist without the support of a mineral rich stellar body below it, such station must rely on minerals being transported to them, which is always more cumbersome and expensive. This has made uninhabited but mineral rich planets gold mines often in the literal sense for anyone aspiring to large-scale manufacturing.
One such mineral-rich planet is Konrakas in the system of Shintaht. The system, originally surveyed and named by the Caldari, lies close to Amarr space and has been claimed by both the Caldari and the Amarriasn, although neither has yet settled the system. Konrakas has an extremely chaotic climate. The seasons vary greatly, ranging from icy cold to scorching heat. Ocean tides are dramatic and floods are very common. Winds howl constantly over the landscape, frequently reaching hurricane speed. The gravitational forces also cause earthquakes regularly, as well as volcanic eruptions.
The planet is, not surprisingly, completely lifeless. The natural forces shaking the planet have also caused many rare and valuable minerals to shift close to the surface, making the planet a mineral heaven. These same natural forces, however, make it extremely difficult to mine these minerals, and neither the Caldari nor the Amarrians have yet found the willingness to make the heavy investment needed to start a planetary mining operation on Konrakas.
News travel quickly in the world of EVE, and none quicker than those provided by the Scope. The Scope is a Gallente-based media firm that is widely regarded as the most far-reaching, depth delving public news agency there is.
An eccentric but fabulously rich entrepreneur named Lous Chavol founded the Scope a century and a half ago. Chavol had made his fortune with one of the more successful communication companies that sprang up after FTL communications were discovered. Through his communication company Chavol had access to massive amount of information and it was a logical step for him to use this as a basis for a media company.
As most modern news agencies the Scope offers its service in many forms, such as through the traditional HoloVision, in order to cater to as many as possible. The most recent addition to this is to send news, even images, directly into the mind of the consumer through the use of headsets provided by Egonics Inc. This new service has already become very popular and the collaboration of the Scope and Egonics promises to be highly profitable for the two companies.
The Scope has always set its standard for a fast and reliable news service. It has never descended into tabloid status, but always set its stock in being as truthful as possible, and this is the image it has managed to cultivate in the minds of people since its foundation. However, its critics point out that even if the news are true this tells only half the story. Just as important as a reliable news coverage is how the news are presented, how much time and space are allocated to each piece of news, how it’s presented and, most importantly, what news are omitted or played down. In this way, it is easy to influence and steer the public opinion because the perceived importance of events is more important than actual facts.
As a prime example of this the critics of Scope mention the case of the Caldari pharmaceuticals giants Zainou, owned by the Ishukone Corporation, and one of the largest sponsors and advertisers of the Scope. Some years ago they got into trouble when accused of bad business ethics involving deals within the Minmatar Republic. The Scope gave these news very little coverage, but all the more to a piece of news of a new wonder-drug that Zainou was working on. Although there is no clear indication that Zainou itself interfered in this matter, many belief that the editors of the Scope decided by themselves to help their important supporters in this way.
Even if peace has reigned in the world of EVE for a number of years this does not mean that the empires are sitting at ease when it comes to military technology. Each one of them is spending huge sums of money on R&D every year, as well as supporting independent research facilities and scientists. All of them have the same dream of discovering the ultimate weapon, something that just the threat of using would make the rest of the empires fall in line. Such weapons have been discovered before and each time their existence gave a new dimension of the game of power politics, but counter-measures have always been discovered sooner or late, returning equilibrium once again.
Many have commented on how relieving it is that none of the empires has developed anything resembling a super-weapon that would surely upset the fragile peace existing between the empires. Even the Jovians with all their technological advances have never produced anything of the sort. But recent rumors might suggest otherwise. These rumors tell of a revolutionary new weapon developed in secret by the Jovians, a weapon capable of even destroying a whole planet. The Jovians are as elusive and tightlipped as always and have neither denied nor confirmed the rumors. Surveillance and covert operations made by other empires have not met with much success as the Jovians are masters of concealment. But the fragments of data that has been gathered have poured fuel on the fire of speculations and many fear that the Jovians are either waiting for the right opportunity for displaying the power of their new gadget, or they are secretly negotiating to sell it to the highest bidder.
One of the numerous operations jointly run and organized by the empires is the InterBus. The InterBus is a transportation organization responsible for ferrying people between space stations. The company was formed three decades ago with the intent to support and facilitate passenger transportation in space. At that time such a company was sorely needed, but the huge initial cost of entering the field made it hard for private companies to move into the field. Today, this has changed; there are now a number of independent companies engaged in ferrying people between space stations, the biggest of them is the Gallente-run OmniBus company.
But InterBus still enjoys the largest market share by a fair margin, something the private companies are not all that happy about; grumbling about unhealthy state-intrusion that makes competition very lopsided. The InterBus may be child of its time but it still serves a vital role - that is to link even the smallest and most remote stations into their vast network. As stated in InterBus’ charter:
"...Interbus must offer service to all stations, placed in solar-systems that have a stargate leading to a solar-system that is a part of the program. Exempt to this rule are systems that exceed a graph distance of 13 jumps from the Interbus headquarters..."
In order to do this efficiently InterBus has had to tread a fine line between serving their governments faithfully while at the same time establishing trust with all the motley assortment of stations appearing all over the place. The board of the InterBus has successfully managed to stay clear of any quarrels and conflicts that regularly emerge between the empires or other factions. The result is that even if InterBus isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms everywhere, they’re still perceived as useful and neutral enough to be allowed to operate.
The InterBus system, spanning almost the whole of the known world, is both a cheap, reliable transportation method for those without access to other space ships and a safety net for all space travelers that get in trouble - many careless explorers or unlucky merchants would never have made it home if it weren’t for the service of the InterBus.
Space outside the realms of the empires gives home to more than just brigands and pirates, it is also the home of those at the other end of the spectrum - those that dedicate their lives to aiding the needy. The Sisters of EVE is one of these organizations, perhaps the one best known. But the Sisters are about more than just aid relief. The foundation of the organization is firmly based in religion and science, a strange combination that has still gained much social ground in all the empires.
The Sisters were originally founded as a neutral aid organization during the Gallente-Caldari War. It later served the same purpose during the Amarr-Jove War and the Minmatar Rebellion and firmly established itself as the main humanitarian relief agency in the world of EVE. The Sisters have a number of bases scattered around, almost all of them are located near popular trade routes, yet outside empire borders.
But the Sisters do more than just come to the aid of those in need. They are also devoted practitioners of their religious beliefs, which center around the EVE-gate. The Sisters belief that this ‘relic from god’, as they call it, holds the key to the universe and are determined to unlock it, in order to bring ‘everlasting peace under god’s guidance and guardianship’ to the world of EVE. The Sisters maintain that god resides at the other side of the gate and from his domain he guides the lives of those that belief in him and keeps them out of harms way. The Sisters have large followings in all the empires (even some Jovians) and the organization is mostly run on donations from those followers, as well as from some limited commercial enterprises and tariffs levied on those visiting their stations.
In recent years the Sisters have become more methodical in their approach to ‘unlocking’ the EVE-gate and have undertaken numerous scientific experiments on the matter. The instigator of these scientific approaches is the current high priestess of the Sisters, Harna Durado. She claims it is ‘god’s will’ that the EVE-gate is studied thoroughly, with the intent of determining once and for all what forces are at work in and around it. As of yet the research being performed by the Sisters has not uncovered any stunning revelations, but the millions of believers belonging to the Sisters’s faith are fervently praying for a breakthrough in the near future.
‘Every seat in the passenger cabin was occupied, the occupants sitting so peacefully one could believe they were napping, if it weren’t for the fact that each and every one had been completely drained of their blood. The same fate had befallen the rest of the crew, even the captain in his capsule was now only a dry husk…’ News like this can now be heard almost every week from some remote region near or within Amarr space. The perpetuators are commonly called the Blood Raiders, aptly named for their habit of draining their victims of blood and taking it with them.
The Blood Raiders are part of an ancient cultist faction called Sani Sabik, meaning Bloodfriends. The cult first appeared thousands of years ago on Amarr Prime, long before space travel came into being. The cult was based on schismatic sect of the Amarr state religion, which advocated that some people were born for greatness and other people only lived to feed and breed these geniuses. To this the cult added the obsession of the Amarr elite - the Holders - about eternal life so the result was a cult so pervasive and destructive that the Amarr authorities immediately stamped down on it. But the cult lived on in the shadows, every so often mutating itself anew. At one time in their history they started using blood in their gruesome rituals, until then they’d had only used blood in the initiation ritual, but now it became the focal point of their supposed search for eternal youth.
Today the cult exists in numerous more or less independent sects throughout the Amarr Empire, and some have even moved their business to other empires or neutral space. Each of the different sects of the Sani Sabik cult vary in their rituals and doctrine, some are inoffensive and almost inactive while a few have taken ‘blooding’ - as they call the draining of blood from a body - to new heights. There are stories of ‘blood farms’, where people are kept against their will and blooded regularly; other stories tell of sects that engage in necrophilic and even cannibalistic activities. As little is known of the inner works of most of the sects it is difficult to say whether these stories are true or just urban legends.
The most notorious of the sects is the one under the leadership of Omir Sarikusa, an Amarrian with some Caldari ancestry. Before Omir took over, the sect was already infamous for killing children as they were considered to have ‘purer’ blood. Omir has abandoned that practice, but instead his sect has started targeting cloned people, as they believe blood from clones is better suited for their freakish blood rituals. In their search for cloned people, Omir’s sect has taken to space and in few short years their frequent attacks on passenger ships and other space vessels have made them feared throughout Amarr space and far beyond.
The bitter ferocity of the first stages of the war fueled the animosity and ill will between the two races, killing all hope for peace for years to come. The Caldari were getting stronger by the day as the refugees from Caldari Prime started to settle in, while the Gallenteans were still in a state of confusion following the fall of the fascist regime. The Caldari mounted a series of raids into Federation territory, which the Gallenteans in their slow and cumbersome ships were ill equipped to meet. But the might of the Federation was too much for the Caldari to overcome and their raids, even if successful military wise, had little impact beside draining the morale of the Gallenteans and bolstering their own.
After a while the Caldari agenda became clear - they were willing to sign peace if the Federation would return Caldari Prime and acknowledge the newly formed Caldari state. But the Gallenteans couldn’t agree to these demands for two reasons: one, they were loath to admit a sovereign state into their midst; close to their own home planet and were unwilling to uproot the sizeable Gallente population on Caldari Prime, and second, the Gallenteans were not alone in the Federation and if they allowed the Caldari to leave the Intakis and Mannars, both of them starting to flex their economical and political muscles, might be tempted to follow, thus throwing the whole society into turmoil. The Gallenteans were forced to regard the Caldari as rebels and renegades and had to try to get them back into the Federation, with good or evil.
For a while the Federation could do little else than watch the Caldari play havoc upon the Gallentean fleet and the outermost provinces of the Federation. The Caldari were getting ever bolder and every few months they seemed to have a new and improved version of their nimble solo-fighters, which the Federation had few answers against. To many Gallenteans it seemed inevitable that, unless their demands were met, the Caldari would sooner or later overrun the whole Federation. Everything the Gallenteans tried failed - their attempts for their own solo-fighters were utter failure and stationary defenses such as mines and sentry guns could only go so far in protecting space facilities for long. It seemed like every time the Gallenteans came up with something sleek and speedy and powerful the Caldari would soon respond with something even sleeker and more powerful.
Finally, the solution evolved from the stationary defenses of all things. The Gallenteans had employed mines for a long time with so-so results, but with the massive advances in robotics technology taking place at this time the mines were slowly transformed into a far deadlier object. The first drones were little more than mines with proximity detonators and some limited moving capabilities, but soon they had advanced to the level that a single drone almost rivaled a solo-fighter’s capabilities. The fact that drones were many times cheaper to build than fighters and didn’t require a highly trained pilot meant that the days of the solo-fighters were numbered. The drones reversed the tide of the war and now the Caldari were scrambling to come up with a solution against these new weapons. It didn’t take them that long - they simply upgraded their fighters a bit, added some shields and extra weapons and called the new vessels frigates. Some extra crew was also needed at first, but then the Caldari obtained capsule technology from the Jovians some years later and could again reduce the crew to one on most frigates.
The climatic battle of the war was fought near the system of Iyen-Oursta. Both sides - the Gallenteans with their drones and Caldari with their new frigates - were confident of victory and thus were willing to throw everything they had into the battle. The result was the second-largest space battle ever fought in the world of New Eden, second only to the Battle of Vak-Atioth fought during the Amarr-Jove War. The Battle of Iyen-Oursta raged for a whole day. During a lapse in the action after almost 15 hour constant fighting the Caldari withdrew in a stately fashion, leaving the battlefield to the Gallenteans. The Gallenteans claimed victory as the side retaining the battlefield, but the Caldari also claimed victory as they had inflicted considerably more losses and causalities on the Gallenteans than they’d received themselves. In any case, the battle gave neither side the decisive victory they’d sought and it was becoming obvious to everyone that such a victory would never be scored.
With frigates the Caldari managed the stem the tide of the advancing Federation and before long stalemate again ensued. Slowly, normal life returned for most people, the war became a distant thunderstorm that only occasionally rattled the populace as a whole. Neither side was willing to offer peace for fear of it being taken as a sign of weakness, but the new generation growing up on both sides was willing to sacrifice itself for such an uncertain cause, so the war slowly faded into small-scale border skirmishes and raids. The matter was finally settled when CONCORD, at that point a relatively new entity that had yet to truly establish itself, decided that the war, posing as it did a threat to New Eden’s diplomatic and economic stability, had gone on long enough. Sensing tiredness on both sides after the Iyen-Oursta battle, they used the opportunity to open peace talks between the two obstinate adversaries and were, within six months, able to broker a ceasefire agreement acceptable to both sides. The Federation acknowledged the Caldari state as sovereign and both sides were to retain their original outposts and settlements, except for Caldari Prime, which remained under Federation control.
The Khanid Kingdom stretches over some dozen constellations near the fringe of the Amarr Empire. The kingdom was founded some 300 years ago and is in every respect a sovereign state, even if the connections with the Amarr Empire itself are strong. It is still ruled by the man who founded the kingdom and whose name it bears - Khanid II, often called the Sixth Heir. Once one of the Five Heirs he defied the Amarrian succession rituals and split himself and his estates from the empire. The reasons were his fierce ambition and love of life, traits that later helped keep his kingdom intact through numerous upheavals. At the time of the succession Khanid was commander-in-chief of the military forces of the empire. After having refused to commit suicide he promptly confiscated one of the two Titans the Amarrians owned at the time, both of them personal property of the Emperor himself. Khanid escaped to his estates on the Titan, escorted by a portion of the Amarr fleet, claimed by Khanid by the power of his position.
For the first few years following the split the newly-founded kingdom faced grave dangers time and again. The greatest threat did not come directly from the Amarr Empire itself - the new emperor and heirs were still getting themselves acquainted to their new positions - but from the brother of Khanid II. This brother, named Dakos, was in the forefront of those relatives of Khanid that opposed his actions and wished to remain as one of the Heir families. Soon after Khanid was crowned as king Dakos rebelled against him and the infant kingdom witnessed its first civil war. The struggle raged for a few months, in that time the Amarr Empire had joined the fray, naturally casting their support for Dakos. For some weeks the survival of the Khanid kingdom hung in the balance, but when Khanid managed through trickery to have his brother assassinated, the opposition fizzled to nothing. Khanid lost some of the isolated regions of the kingdom, but the core of it remained intact.
This was not the first time that Khanid’s own family acted against him. Khanid has always managed to smother all rebellion attempts, each time tightening the leash on his family. Today all women and children belonging to the family spend their time in the royal palace on Khanid Prime. Although they live in luxury and comfort they’re still hostages, kept to keep their husbands and fathers in line. As for the men they must spend at least quarter of each year in the royal palace on Khanid Prime and there are strict restrictions as to what arms they can own or bear.
The Khanid Kingdom in many ways resembles the Amarr Empire. The caste system is intact - the Holders still reign as the social elite. The governmental structure and administration are all but identical, the only difference being the lack of checks-and-balances that many entrenched institutions and local barons exercise within the empire. Just as for the Amarr Emperor Khanid II is in name undisputed ruler of his realm, but in practice a number of powerful magnates share or dilute the power. In the empire’s case it’s the Heirs that compete with the Emperor for power, in the kingdom’s case it’s the members of the minor families that supported Khanid during his rift with the empire. Other features, such as the importance of religion and slavery, are also very much alike in the two states. In fact, the kingdom takes slavery even further than the empire. The Amarr Empire uses almost exclusively Minmatar and Ealur slaves, but the kingdom, denied many of their traditional slave sources, take slaves wherever they can find them. Khanid himself has a Gallentean - a former pop-star - as his personal slave, something he finds highly amusing but makes the Gallenteans frothing at their mouths.
But even if Khanid has tried to build his kingdom to mirror the empire he once belonged to, there are many discreet differences. The biggest of these are the way the Dark Amarrians - so called for the color schemes on their ships - conduct their trade and business. The Khanid Kingdom is not nearly as rigid and stale in their governing of inter-stellar trade, for the very simple reason that the kingdom absolutely needs outside trade to survive, which is not the case for the empire. Since the Amarr Empire seized their attempts to reconcile with the separatists decades ago trade has started to flourish between the two. The result is that today the kingdom acts in many ways like a window to the outside world for the reclusive empire. Trade goods that can’t be directly transported into or out of the empire are carried through kingdom because of the much more lenient trade policies the empire has for them. Many Dark Amarrians have grown fat acting as intermediaries for Amarr traders and outsiders.
Many other notable differences can be seen between the kingdom and the empire - the Dark Amarrians embrace technology, including cloning, much more willingly than the Amarr brethrens and even if most Amarrian traditions and customs still exist within the kingdom, they’ve been modified so that Dark Amarrian society is much more dynamic and robust than that of the Amarr Empire.
Ten years ago security forces in the Caldari system of Suroken destroyed a civilian ship. The headquarters of Hyasyoda, a Caldari Corporation, are located in the system. The ship was found trespassing and refused to change course despite numerous warnings and was blown up in the end.
Aboard the ship where numerous radicals, both Caldari and Gallenteans, demonstrating against recently exposed information about dubious drug experiments the Corporation was undertaking, involving for instance slaves provided by the Amarrians.
All but one of the radicals were killed when the ship blew up, the only survivor was the ship captain Aki Onikori, protected by his capsule. Amongst the dead was his wife. Onikori swore that the death of his wife and his compatriots would be avenged and in the decade since the incident he has made his vow come true through several terrorist acts.
Onikori seldom goes by his real name and is best known to the public by the name Fiend, a play on words of his name in Caldari. In the past few years his twisted ideology has mutated from one of innocent anarchy to a bloody crusade against authority in every form. Early on his focus was first and foremost on the pharmaceuticals industry, but in recent years he has started targeting more diverse targets and seems especially fond of governmental institutions. Onikori is very persuasive and extremely driven and these traits have helped him secure support from various sources sympathetic to his cause. With these funds the Fiend has created a small, tight unit of experienced and dedicated terrorists. It goes without saying that the Fiend and his friends are high on the wanted list of almost every police and military organization there is. The SARO is particularly keen on getting its hands on him, after he blew up a SARO ship recently. This embarrassment is something SARO wants to rectify as soon as possible.
But the Fiend is not only cunning, but also paranoid. He never stays long in any one place and even his closest associates are often in the dark about his whereabouts or future plans. This extreme paranoia has served the Fiend well in his on-going crusade against the pharmaceutical industry and other “totalitarian institutes with no regard for human life” as he himself phrases it. Even if he’s a hunted man the Fiend still finds time to plan and execute his terrorist acts that have made him famous. The Fiend is indiscriminating in the selection of his targets, a clear sign that he holds few customs or creeds dear, something that his criticizers have pointed out as a serious contradiction – on one hand he claims to be fighting against those that hold human life in contempt, while on the other he frequently kills innocent bystanders in his attacks.
The fact that many of his attacks have killed or injured civilian bystanders, often children, means that he is highly unpopular almost everywhere and that few people will be sorry when his reign of terrorism comes to an end.
Following the attack on Nouvelle Rouvenor an extreme right-wing government grabbed the power reigns in the Gallente Federation and advocated a harsh response: bombing Caldari Prime and sending in troops to take control of the planet. Those within the Federation believing that peace talks should be initiated instead of an invasion didn’t dare speak up for fear of being branded cowards or, worse, traitors; the Gallente war machine grinded into gear.
It soon became obvious that it was a question of when, not if, the Gallenteans would take full control of the planet. The newly formed Caldari government, led by the heads of the Corporations, was far from being in full agreement as to what the correct course of action was. This disagreement, which severely hampered the Caldari State in following a coherent strategy, was only settled after the Morning of Reasoning, when the six most militant Corporations jointly ousted the other CEO’s from power. The Caldari saw that it was impossible to try to fight the much larger Gallente Federation for control of Caldari Prime. Instead, they started devising a plan to evacuate the Caldari population on the planet.
For the plan to work an evacuation window of at least one month had to be created by the Caldari Navy; it had to keep the Gallente fleet occupied and away from the planet for this period of time to allow the thousands of civilian and cargo vessels gathered for the evacuation to operate safely. The Caldari high command knew their fleet was heavily outnumbered and outgunned by the Gallente fleet, but they put heir faith in several advantages: first, the surprise factor would help them in the initial stages; secondly, the ferocity of the Caldari personnel, fighting for their home and their families, would carry them through a lot of hardship; and thirdly, the Gallente ships orbiting Caldari Prime were large and cumbersome, little more than shooting platforms ideal for orbital bombardment. The Caldari hoped their small, fast one-man fighters would run circles around the Gallente ships.
It is doubtful whether the above-mentioned advantages had sufficed for the Caldari, but they enjoyed one further advantage that they knew nothing about. The extreme right-wing faction that held the reigns of power in the Federation was getting paranoid. They saw conspirators in every corner and started firing prominent figures from the administration and army, replacing them with eager yes-men with little experience and even less initiative. The result was total chaos in the Gallente war-effort. This chaos was not enough to completely halt the military operations on and around Caldari Prime, but it made the Gallente fleet and army ill-prepared for any drastic changes.
It was thus with a relative ease that the Caldari fleet managed to take control of the orbital zones of Caldari Prime and drive the Gallente fleet back. Even the most optimistic of the Caldari were taken by surprise and there were even talks that the Caldari fleet should continue to Gallente Prime and repay the Gallenteans by bombing their home planet. But the more level-headed of the Caldari knew that decisively defeating the Gallente home fleet was impossible, indeed it would be hard enough to defend against it once it arrived to reclaim the space around Caldari Prime. So instead, the Caldari high command quickly set into motion their evacuation program and soon millions of Caldari were leaving the planet for their new homes.
Two weeks passed. More than half the Caldari population was still on the planet. Both sides employed dozens of scout ships to gauge the strength and intentions of the other. It was becoming obvious to the Caldari that the Gallenteans were preparing a massive assault on Caldari Prime to drive the Caldari out and resume their military conquest of the planet. A new plan was needed. Days passed and desperation began seeping in; the Gallente attack was imminent.
Finally, the Caldari admiral Yakiya Tovil-Toba took matters into his own hands. He led the few dozen ships he commanded and jumped to Gallente Prime. Before the stunned Gallenteans could respond he had attacked and destroyed a few stray Gallente ships. But the Gallenteans were quick to recover and before long admiral Tovil-Toba was on the run. But he managed to beat the advancing Gallente ships off and retreat to the moon of Floreau. The Gallenteans stop their pursuit to gather their forces and lick their wounds. The two fleets clashed again the next day and again admiral Tovil-Toba showed his remarkable tactical skills and managed to withdraw relatively unscathed. Tovil-Toba played this game of cat-and-mouse with the Gallenteans for a whole week, except that he was in the role of the mouse. Eventually only one of his ships remained, a badly damaged fighter-carrier. In his dying breaths Tovil-Toba directed the huge vessel down towards Gallente Prime.
On entering the atmosphere the ship broke into several burning pieces, killing all aboard. But the largest of these pieces reached the ground and one of them hit the city of Hueromont, killing roughly two million people. Admiral Tovil-Toba and his crew sacrificed themselves in order for millions more Caldari to escape. To this day he is revered as a national hero and his name is one of the first things every Caldari child learns.
The turmoil in the Federation created by the Hueromont Incident, as the Gallenteans knew it, toppled the government and a new one took over, this one more willing to listen to those wishing for peace. The week bought by Tovil-Toba and the ensuing confusion following in the wake of the new government gave the Caldari enough time to finish the evacuation of Caldari Prime. Only a small fighting force remained, acting as a guerilla force.
One would imagine that peace would now be settled, but it wasn’t to be. A large faction of the Gallente Federation was neither willing to forgive or forget Nouvelle Rouvenor or Hueromont and the Caldari, elated by their success and their belief in superior fighting power with their small one-man fighters, dreamed of returning one day to their home planet. The war was to rage for years yet and some stunning military victories by the Caldari following their Breakout soon led the Gallenteans in a desperate search for an answer against the highly trained one-man fighters that lay at the core of the Caldari victories.
CONCORD (Consolidated Cooperation and Relations Command) is an international assembly of regulating bodies founded over a century ago, not long after the five empires had established contact with each other. Relations between the five were strained right from the beginning, and one of the primary aims of CONCORD was to ease the pervasive tension and create a foundation for the empires to work their differences out peacefully.
The organization is branched into numerous divisions, each of which handles a certain aspect of the empires’ relations. Of these divisions the CAD (Commerce Assessment Department), which oversees interstellar trade agreements and regulations, and the DED (Directive Enforcement Department), which oversees policing in space, are by far the largest and most influential. Most spacefarers will only ever deal with these two departments on any regular basis; to millions of people, these two represent the actual face of CONCORD.
The inner workings of CONCORD are democratic in nature, with each of the five empires technically possessing equal say in all matters (though a nation’s actual pull more often than not will come down to the persuasiveness of its representatives on the debating floor). Early on, the Amarrians were adamant that the Minmatar Republic would not gain admission to the assembly, but they later reluctantly agreed.
For the first few years of its existence, CONCORD wielded limited power. The fledgling organization had little diplomatic sway, and regulation enforcement would time and time again prove difficult for its agents. It was not until 18 years after its founding that CONCORD gained the respect of the international community. After the battle of Iyen-Oursta – the bloodiest and most costly engagement the Gallente-Caldari War had seen in decades – both sides were tired of fighting, though long-entrenched hatred and pride prevented either side from asking for a ceasefire. CONCORD took the initiative, and in just under six months managed to negotiate a peace accord between these two bitter enemies, one that would endure for almost a century.
In the last two decades the organization’s authority increased further, particularly as interstellar trade grew into the cornerstone of New Eden’s economy that it is today. The growing power of CONCORD often raised concern within the empires that the organization could begin to exercise leverage in areas up until then regarded as the nations’ internal affairs. No longer simply a neutral ground for the empires to hammer out diplomatic agreements, CONCORD had become an independent institution that set its own rules and regulations, ones which it was both willing and able to uphold. The organization’s ever-expanding bureaucracy had subtly severed its cords over time, so that it swore fealty to no nation. The only hold the empires had historically possessed over the organization – that of financial support – had in addition been almost completely erased, as revenues garnered through customs, confiscation of illegal goods, license sales and the like were (and still are) more than enough to keep the organization in the black.
On several occasions throughout CONCORD’s history relations between the empires deteriorated to within an inch of all-out war but were nursed back to health through the organization’s diplomacy and deterrence. Such was not to be the case in late YC 110, when a fleet belonging to the Minmatar Elders and the Thukker Tribe conducted a strike against the organization’s core communications hub, crippling its rapid response teams and enabling the Elders to mount a large-scale offensive against the Amarr Empire. This marked the beginning of what would become known as the Elder War.
CONCORD was back to a semblance of functionality in short order, but the damage was already done; tensions had boiled over into conflict. While CONCORD imposed peace enough to maintain the status quo and keep New Eden from slipping into anarchy, the hostilities already invoked would not be quelled. Using auxiliary forces composed of capsuleer paramilitaries, the nations of New Eden today fight a war under the watchful gaze of CONCORD, which still struggles to rebuild and redefine itself in the blood-red dawn of the Empyrean age. It remains to be seen how – or, indeed, whether – this one-time pillar of New Eden will restore its tarnished reputation.
In the time since all the races came into contact with each other about 150 years ago interstellar trading has steadily increased, especially in the time since the races began cooperating more closely through institutes such as CONCORD.
Today a certain number of ships are equipped with a capsule, which makes control of the ship much more easy and efficient for the pilot (known as a ‘capsuleer’). Not just anybody can become a capsuleer. Captains need special kind of neural riggings and the training is extremely rigorous and taxing, with only a small fraction of students actually making it through. This makes able capsuleers a unique breed that possesses special status within society. Capsuleers are regarded by the empires as objects of huge prestige, since the number of interstellar traders an empire has in many ways reflects the economic vitality of the empire.
Despite the desire of the empires to keep their capsuleers on a leash, however, things have developed differently. Because of the capsuleers’ exalted status, they’ve managed as the years have passed to make themselves ever more independent from the empires that spawned them. While many capsuleers are still employees of an empire company or organization, the work they do is largely self-controlled. The ever-increasing number of capsuleers entering the market alleviates this problem for the empires and has allowed them to increase the number of capsuleers working for them despite the fact that proportionally more and more of these individuals are going totally independent. The independent ones, however, are setting up their own alliances and nation-states out on the fringe, slowly increasing their power and influence.
The prestige enjoyed by the capsuleer is enormous. Apart from the celebrity status many of them enjoy they receive a number of other privileges. The most important of these is their access to cloning, which is strictly supervised in all the empires. Although some rogue cloning stations are in operation the vast majority of cloning facilities are owned and run by the empires and the requirements for clone ownership are strict and rigorous. Capsuleers are one of very few professions that, due to the nature of their job, possess more or less unrestricted access to clones, although any special clone types must be paid for out of their own pockets.
By the time the Gallente Federation was founded two centuries ago the Caldari Corporations were already well established in Caldari society. Although not nearly as powerful as they are today, they were still preeminent in Caldari economic life.
Shortly after jump gate technology was jointly discovered by the Gallente and the Caldari a little over five hundred years before the Federation formed, the Caldari corporations had started their own interstellar surveying and colonization, separate from that conducted by the Gallente. It was these colonies, kept as a secret from the Gallenteans, that became the source of friction between the Gallenteans and the Caldari, culminating in the latter’s defection from the Federation and an ensuing war between the two races.
It all started when a Gallente exploration ship happened upon one of the hidden Caldari colonies. When the Federation Senate learned of this they demanded a full-scale investigation into the matter and that all hidden Caldari colonies should immediately been put under Federation authority. This was too much for the Caldari Corporations, which were already grumbling over increasing Federation interference into their affairs. For the Caldari it was a simple question of losing their autonomy forever by caving in or making a stand right then and there. They decided to make a stand.
What made the situation so tense right from the start was the situation on Caldari Prime. Being located in the same solar system as Gallente Prime made the Gallenteans very nervous and, more importantly, a sizeable Gallentean population was living on Caldari Prime. Right after the Caldari defected from the Federation they focused on securing the jump gates leading to their (once) hidden bases, as those bases provided the backbone to the Caldari military infrastructure at that time. At the same time the Gallenteans moved their fleet into orbit around Caldari Prime and started blocking the planet.
For the next few days nothing much happened. The Caldari were content to sit by the jump gates, while the Gallenteans were debating how to best negotiate a peace agreement. But the Caldari on Caldari Prime were restless. They found the Gallente blockade intolerable and soon small-scale guerrilla activities escalated into all out hostilities. In the end the Gallente population on the planet had to pay the price for the Federation’s indecisiveness.
The turning point came when Caldari partisans sabotaged the glass dome of the Gallente-inhabited underwater city Nouvelle Rouvenor. More than half a million perished. From then on a lengthy, bloody war between the two races was all but inevitable – the Federation retaliated at once by sending an invasion force down to Caldari Prime and began a systematic orbital bombardment of the planet. Soon, the Caldari population had been driven to the mountains and the forests; their resistance getting weaker by the day. The only question was: how would the newly formed Caldari State respond?
The Heaven constellation is a group of seven systems on the fringes of known space. In the middle of the constellation lies the Utopia system, where the headquarters of the Angel pirate clan are located.
The Angels are today one of the oldest and most powerful of the criminal organization found in the world of EVE. They established themselves in Utopia system a century ago and soon had the whole Heaven constellation under their control. At first they mainly acted as ‘muscle-for-hire’ for other criminal factions, but soon they started expanding their activities. They slowly but steadily increased their influence in the underworld and today DED consider them the most dangerous criminal faction around. The Angels’ area of operation is much larger than that of most other crime syndicates. Due to this, the Cartel is divided into many smaller operational groups, each of which is prefixed with a specific name hinting at their role (Guardian Angels, Dark Angels).
But many believe that there is another reason behind the power of the Angels. The Heaven constellation is the former habitat of the Jovians. The ancestors of the Jovians settled in Utopia while the EVE gate was still open. The Heaven constellation was the home of the First and Second Jovian Empires, both larger and grander than their current Third Empire.
The Third Empire was founded half a millennium ago amidst the devastation of the Jovian Disease, which threatened to disintegrate Jovian society. In a desperate attempt to escape the wrath of the mysterious epidemic, the Jovians decided to relocate to another part of the world. Three huge vessels were built, termed Motherships; they were the first Titan-class ships ever built. The majority of the Jovian population relocated in the Motherships. Those showing any sign of the Disease were left behind to die.
Some couple of centuries later, when space traveling had become a common thing, the constellation was entered by migrating scavenger groups. Many of those groups set themselves up within the constellation and eventually they evolved into criminal organizations. The strongest of those was the Angel cartel. They took over the abandoned but still intact Jovian space stations scattered around the constellation and rumors abound that some hidden secrets the Angels unlocked in these old stations is the real reason for the Angels’ rise to power.
A century ago a Gallentean astrologer named Damella Macaper prophesized the end of the world in a book called ‘The Seven Events of the Apocalypse’. Considered a hack and a nutcase by her contemporaries, the book was largely ignored outside the small circle of her cult following. A short while later Macaper died and her cult died with her as her followers dwindled rapidly.
The book describes seven calamities that will befall the world, culminating in the “return of the dark light from the heart of the mother”, as Macaper described it. The book is written in a stylized prose and even if the general course of events can be followed, any detailed information is lacking. It can be deduced that the calamities will occur within a space of few months or years at the most, but when or where this will happen is not mentioned, decreasing the credibility of the prophecy as a whole.
For decades ‘The Seven Events of the Apocalypse’ had been all but forgotten by everyone except a handful of scholars. But in recent months the eyes of the world have increasingly turned towards this old tome for explanations. A series of strange natural occurrences around the world seem oddly similar to the first calamitous events described in Macaper’s prophecy a century ago. Although few believe that the actual end of the world is near people is still wary and extensive studies are being carried out into the prophecy and other surviving Macaper texts for more clues on what the future holds for the world of EVE.
The first event in Macaper’s prophecy she described as “the cosmetic kiss of the comets” and this is exactly what happened in a remote Caldari system almost a year ago, when two large comets collided head on. The clash occurred within the boundaries of the solar system, but not close enough to any of the planets to cause any drastic effects. Debris from the comets disturbed space traffic for a while, but that was all. Albeit a very rare event, the comet collision was not connected to the prophecy at this time.
The second event occurred a few months later when the planet Fricoure in the Gallente Federation was literally flooded with rains that lasted for weeks. Scientists could easily explain this by citing shifts in the weather patterns in the upper atmosphere and it wasn’t until a diligent astrology student pointed out the similarities between this downpour and the second event of Macaper’s prophecy that people began taking notice.
The third calamity is described by Macaper as being a “roaring stone that silences the world.” A week ago a huge asteroid entered the atmosphere of the Amarrian planet Rumida at a low angle. It cut across the surface of the planet for hundred of kilometers with a thunderous roar before finally slamming into the ocean. In its wake lay the ruins of thousands of homes; destroyed by the powerful shockwaves created by the asteroid, the shockwaves plowing the earth along a path several kilometers wide. Casualties numbered a few thousand; fortunately the asteroid’s impact wasn’t close to settled territories. But Macaper’s prophecy came true in a very striking manner; dozens of thousands were left deaf by the meteor, as the sound waves streaming around it had exploded the eardrums of people many kilometers away from the meteor. The roaring stone had silenced the world for all those people and the name of Damella Macaper became renowned throughout the world.
Four more events are to take place according to the prophecy and speculations about their nature abound. Many claim expertise in the prophecies, but none can inform us with any certainty about what is to transpire. The fourth event is described by Macaper as “the appetite of nothing expands over the world”; the fifth is described as “the little brother makes the final sorrowful steps home; he is not welcome”; the sixth is described as “what was many now becomes one when one becomes four”; the seventh is mentioned above.
What this means is for anyone to guess, but the majority of people agree that Macaper’s prophecy has put the fate of humans into perspective for the public and the next few months or years should be interesting indeed to watch.
The Day of Darkness was properly named. That day saw one of the worst storms ever on the biggest continent on Matar, laying incredible amount of destruction in few short hours. But greater danger loomed, because that same day six giant slave vessels entered the Pator system. From there each ship set out for a different Minmatar planet, escorted by heavily armed military ships. Once in orbit the Amarrians descended onto the surface and started rounding up people. The Minmatars put up a brave resistance, but to no avail, the superior Amarr technology swept all Minmatar armed forces away, then plundered the populace at will. In addition, the Amarrians took great care of destroying every Minmatar space ship and installation they encountered, with the intent of making it very difficult for the Minmatars to gain strong space presence.
The Amarrians enslaved hundreds of millions of Minmatar in that first raid. Over the next millennium they would repeat their slave raids with regularity, capturing hundreds of millions more and throwing the Minmatar nation into a state of confusion, sorrow and insecurity.
Aeron Assis. Niques S. Leutre. Niemar Kokolen. Are any of these names the real name of the man who uses them? His best known alias is not even a name, the Broker. Mention the Broker to any governmental agent anywhere within the world of EVE and you’ll be sure to get a response. The only thing more numerous than the number of aliases he is known by is the number of speculations on his background. There are precious few concrete facts known about this elusive spy, negotiator, informant, arms dealer and manipulator of men and states. As a master of disguise, who utilizes the latest in cloning and DNA technology to keep his appearance a secret, such basic details as race, height or hair-color are unknown. However, he’s most often considered to be of either Amarrian or Gallentean ancestry, of average height and build, with no apparent quirks or physical marks of notice.
For more than 50 years the Broker has directly or indirectly been involved in various dealings between states, prominent warlords or intelligence agencies. Most of these dealings include exchange of information, weapon selling and espionage. In addition, various accounts of criminal activity and even terrorism have sometimes been credited to the Broker, but none of them are based on any solid facts. What is known is that the Broker operates a vast information net, mainly within the higher strata of the society. He uses this net to gain advantageous business deals, but he also uses the information garnered to blackmail, bribe or manipulate people or even whole governments. In these operations he’s often working under contract from a third party, invariably a political or economical rival of the victims.
As befits the secretive and shadowy endeavors of the Broker, few of his deeds have reached the public eye. In the inner circles of the espionage world, everyone has a story of their own about him, often offering a glimpse of a piece of much grander scheme the Broker has undertaken. One of his more celebrated feats took place early in his career, almost half a century ago and is known among intelligence agents as the Omicron Incident.
At that time two feudal Amarrian lords ruling adjacent domains at the fringes of the Amarr Empire were clashing over the privilege to extend their domains to include that of another feudal lord, recently deceased. The Broker, going by the name Aeron Assis, had just concluded a contract to buy a large quantity of Caldari and Gallente manufactured weapons. He was looking for prospective buyers and decided the two Amarrian lords to be ideal. The problem was that the two lords were just about to reach an agreement on dividing the disputed territories between them. The Broker acted fast and produced documents claiming that one of the lords, Hurid-Akan, had been conspiring to have the other lord, Kirion, assassinated. The news infuriated Kirion and made him break off all negotiations with Hurid-Akan. Determined to strike the iron while still hot the Broker set out for Hurid-Akan’s domain and leaked (false) information to Hurid-Akan’s intelligence arm that Kirion had broken of the negotiations because he intended to invade and occupy the disputed territories with the aid of an undisclosed ally. Hurid-Akan was hesitant to take up arms he considered his army too ill-equipped to be an efficient fighting force. But to his immense relief he learned that a Caldari arms dealer was visiting his capital (this was of course the Broker in yet another disguise). The Broker sold Hurid-Akan top-of-the-line Caldari weapons and then left, again heading for Kirion’s domain. Meanwhile, Hurid-Akan hurriedly began mobilizing his armed forces.
Kirion, alarmed by the mobilization of Hurid-Akan’s forces, began his own preparations for war. The Broker leaked the information about the advanced Caldari weapons Hurid-Akan had bought to Kirion and then proceeded to sell him Gallentean weaponry as counter measures.
For days, the Broker played the two lords against each other, employing a combination of falsified surveillance data, forged documents describing imaginary plots and plans and his net of agents and double-agents within both domains to increase the paranoia of the lords so they’d buy more of his weapons. In the end, the Amarr Emperor, notified of the increased tension in the region, was forced to sent a royal arbitrator to calm things down. By that time the two lords spent their entire fortune buying all of the Broker’s weapons and the Broker himself had quietly disappeared from the Empire. This was not to be the last time that the Broker ingeniously played factions against each other for his own benefit.
As the years have passed the Broker himself has become increasingly paranoid of keeping his identity and whereabouts hidden. His vast information net and accumulated wealth has made this relatively easy for him and today he works almost entirely through middlemen in his wheeling and dealing in the outer world. He is still considered to be very active, but the extent of his operation is for anybody to guess.
The planet Radonis lies deep within the Amarr Empire in the fiefdom of Ardishapur, one of the five royal families. Radonis is the capital of Ardishapur’s domain and is considered one of the leading places of theological scholarship within the Amarr Empire.
The current head of the family and one of the Five Heirs, Yonis Ardishapur, had his right hand amputated at birth and replaced by a cybernetic silver one. It’s the same for all male members of the Ardishapur family. For more than 700 years an imperial law has decreed that every male born into the Ardishapur family would have his right hand amputated at the wrist right after birth. The laws do not forbid them from replacing it with a cyber-hand and today the silver hand is the unofficial symbol of the Ardishapur family.
The circumstances which led to this imperial law are as bizarre as the law itself. As it happened, Lady Phanca, the mother of the emperor at the time, was visiting Radonis and staying at the Ardishapur’s royal palace. Lady Phanca was a legend in her time; a strict, extremely ambitious woman, in many ways ruthless but still charismatic in her dealings with people. Many thought she had unnaturally strong influence on her son, the emperor, and many cases can be cited where the actions of the emperor can be directly linked to the wishes of his mother. The Ardishapur decree, as it became known as, is one of them.
Lady Phanca had a pet furrier, a small furry animal commonly found as pet among the Amarrian higher class. It was a well-known quirk that the otherwise severe and dispassionate lady loved her pet lavishly. When young Uri Ardishapur, son of the Ardishapur royal heir, killed the twittering creature at the dinner table, the fury of the old lady left no doubt in the minds of those present that the repercussions would be terrible. Persuading her son to pass the fore mentioned laws, Uri Ardishapur became the first of the Ardishapurs to lose his right hand, the hand that had slain lady Phanca’s pet furrier.
Imperial laws are extremely strong within the Amarr Empire and are almost regarded as the written will of god. It is very rare for any of them to be changed or revoked. The Ardishapurs may at one time have wanted the law to be revoked, but today they revel in this old tradition and consider it one of their most important family heirlooms.
The name of Tyma Raitaru will forever be associated with the term freelance research. Raitaru, a Caldari by birth, pioneered what has today become a popular profession among rogue scientists and scholars around the world of EVE - that of the knowledge nomad, selling his work to the highest bidder.
Raitaru began his career working in the R&D department at a company owned by the Ishukone Corporation. He became increasingly frustrated about the fact that Ishukone took all his work and inventions and made them their own, giving scant credit to the creator. In the end he left and set up his own laboratory under his sole control. There he struggled for some years, constantly on the brink of financial ruin. It was only when he turned his focus toward the most practical of all inventions - that of weaponry - that his career really took off. Forty years ago Raitaru offered the blueprints for the Achilles missile for sale on the open market. The Achilles missile was at that time the best missile available and every empire and every faction wanted it. The Achilles missile didn’t employ any revolutionary new technology, but instead it combined many solid concepts and designs to make it extremely reliable and powerful for a small price. In the design of Achilles Raitaru combined the innovative approach of the researcher with the practical mindset of the craftsman. Ever since, those that have followed in Raitaru’s footsteps have been most successful when they take existing technologies and products and combine them to invent some superior product. Most of today’s freelance researchers work predominantly in the fields of weapons and ship equipment, and they frequently operate out of space stations or lone research outposts.
Amarr Emperors can expect to live for at least 500 years through the use of implants and other life-prolonging technology. Since the Amarrians believe royal flesh to be sacred, cloning it is seen as blasphemy and therefore strictly forbidden.
The emperor’s position is not hereditary. When the emperor dies, a new one must be selected from among the Five Heirs. The Five Heirs are the heads of the five royal families (the most powerful families in the Amarr Empire) and descendants of the original members of the Privy Council. The Council was a staunch supporter of the Emperor during the turbulent times known as the Moral Reforms, a struggle between the Emperor and the Council of Apostles which took place 1500 years ago. Since that time, although the Privy Council has today evolved into a fifteen-member council composed of representatives from the Empire’s various non-royal power blocs and institutions, it still represents, at its core, the five royal families vying for the throne.
When the Emperor dies, an elaborate ritual for selecting a new Emperor is put into action. These rituals are performed in strict order and take a few weeks to complete. The rituals are always undergoing modification to better reflect the state of contemporary society and to fix problems encountered in earlier successor bids. The rituals mainly involve various ways in which the Five Heirs prove their loyalty to the Empire and their ability to run it. As should be expected, most of the rituals involve the Heirs directly, though some of them have changed through the ages to allow another person, chosen by the Heir, to perform in his or her place. In recent times, the successful selection of personal champions has been increasingly viewed as one of the strongest indicators of an Heir’s ability and prestige.
One of the most distinctive aspects of the succession process is that once a new Emperor has been chosen, the remaining four Heirs must commit ritual suicide. This is done to minimize the risk of conflict between the new Emperor and the old Privy Council; by removing all the old Heirs and replacing the Privy Council with those next in line within the five royal families, the slate is wiped clean.
Only twice has this tradition been broken since it first came into being more than a millennium ago. The first time was when Emperor Heideran VII of the Kador Family was selected just over 300 years ago. One of the remaining Heirs at the time was a young man named Khanid II, who had only recently become the head of his family. Khanid refused to uphold the ancient tradition and fled the royal court. In the vast regions of his family estate he founded a separate nation and called it the Khanid Kingdom. Needless to say the two states did not start off on good terms, and while their diplomatic history has seen its share of ups and downs, they are on good terms today. A minor new family, the Tash-Murkons, took the place of Khanid’s family in the royal court, and remains one of the five royal families to this day.
The second time the succession tradition was broken was in the year YC 110, when Jamyl Sarum – previously thought dead in the YC 105 ritual where her predecessor, Doriam, became Emperor – ascended to power in an Empire that had been floundering for over a year under the command of a ruthless and self-serving usurper named Dochuta Karsoth. Wielding an immensely powerful weapon of mysterious origin, Sarum stymied a massive invasion of the Minmatar into Amarr space and rode the wave of adulation directly to the Imperial throne, in the process sidestepping completely the traditions of imperial succession.
The vast Amarr plantations on Syrikos V have used slaves as workforce for centuries. Scores of Ealurians, Minmatars, Ni-Kunnis and criminals or political dissenters of Amarrian origin have worked, bred and died by the millions through the ages.
The droves of slaves needed to work the fields coupled with the high mortality rate means that elaborate methods of keeping the slaves in check, such as Vitoc, are not cost efficient enough to warrant their usage. Instead, the Amarrians employ slaver, sometimes referred to as slave-dog.
Slaver is a native animal of Syrikos V and has been bred by the Amarrians from the time they first settled the planet more than a millennium ago. It’s a vertebrate with four elongated feet and a slender, fur-clad body. A fully grown slaver can stand more than a meter tall from its shoulder-blades to the soles of its front legs. But the most noticeable feature of the slaver are its massive jaws and teeth, constantly slobbering in anticipation for something to chew on - hence the old name of the slaver before its role as slave keeper: Drooler. The slaver can run very fast and is able to jump vast distances, making this carnivorous beast a deadly foe against unarmed humans.
Slavers are extremely vicious and blood-thirsty, but they can be tamed as long as the training starts while they’re still small cubs. The slavers are allowed to roam free outside the barbed parameters of the acres of the plantations. The agile slavers are quick to see or smell slaves that have ventured outside the fences and few can escape the slavers quick, merciless attacks. A preferred tactic of the slaver is to attack from above; for this it often lurks in high places, even trees, or by simply jumping many meters into the air and landing on their unsuspecting prey.
The favorable experience of employing the slaver as a guard animal has led to it being exported from Syrikos V to most other Amarrian agricultural planets and even some industrial and mining ones as well. In recent years, the slaver has become fashionable among Amarrians as pet for those willing to risk its often murderous nature; slavers can become extremely loyal and devoted to their owners if handled with care.
In the deep recesses of the Taisy system lies a lonely mining station called Kyonoke Pit. The station, built 40 years ago by a Caldari mining company owned by the Hyasyoda Corporation, was at that time the largest mining and refining station of tasc (twin atomic superconductor crystal), the core component of inter-stellar communication devices.
For years the mining operation went smoothly and Kyonoke Pit soon became one of the most profitable mining stations of the Hyasyoda Corporation. Kyonoke Pit is located on a huge asteroid and as the years went by the mining shafts dug ever deeper into the heart of the asteroid.
Five years ago the space tower orbiting Taisy Prime received an emergency signal from Kyonoke Pit. An epidemic of some sort had broken out on the mining station and the crew was dying rapidly. The tower personnel lost contact with the Pit a few minutes later and were unable to re-establish it.
A scout ship was sent out to investigate. On its arrival at the Pit, no lights were visible on the station and no life-signs were detected. An emergency team, clothed in protective suits, that was dispatched into the station was greeted by the horrific sight of the station’s crew strewn all over the place dead and decaying. The mask of agony on the men’s faces spoke volumes about their last terrible ordeal and the garish red spots on their bloated bodies clearly indicated that the cause of their death was by poisoning or some sort of a plague. It was clear that the infliction had surfaced suddenly and slain the crew in a matter of minutes.
The emergency team reported their findings to the scout ship docked outside and then continued exploring. Some two hours later members of the emergency team started complaining about discomfort and the captain of the scout ship ordered them back to the ship. But on their way back the team-members collapsed in agony - it was clear they had caught the deadly malady despite their protective suits. The captain, fearful for the safety of himself and the rest of the crew, detached the ship from the Pit and left the station while the rest of the emergency team died on the docking ledge.
Thus began the story of the Kyonoke Infection - one of the most deadly and mysterious pestilences man has come into contact with. The Caldari authorities sealed Kyonoke Pit off a few hours after the incident described above. Further research was made with great care and the results were not heartening. A biological speck resembling a protein causes the plague. It enters the body through the respiration system and then enters the blood stream. From there it moves to the brain, where it germinates. In its advanced state, the protein speck enters the medulla oblongata, where it infects the nerve cells very rapidly. The host quickly loses control over all bodily functions, accompanied by a great amount of pain, finally resulting in heart- and lung failure within the space of a few minutes. The specks can survive in an advanced state for a few days; they can leave a dead host and enter another living being close by, in such cases the new host dies within a few hours once the speck has reached the brain.
The speck can also be found in a basic state. As such, it can lie dormant for years and it can survive in extreme environments and conditions. When it enters a living being it usually starts developing to its advanced state, but this is not always the case; it can also lie dormant within a person for a long period of time. It can also enter the brain and start infecting proteins there, slowly but steadily killing the host by eating up its brain over a course of few months. This dual nature of the bio-speck makes it even more of an enigma, not to mention more dangerous.
It can be safely deduced that the biological speck was accidentally uncovered in the bowels of the asteroid Kyonoke Pit is on, but whether it originated there or not is impossible to tell. It is virtually impossible to detect the speck in a person, due to the fact it resembles normal proteins to such a high degree. This has led to speculations that the speck evolved in humans or was even manmade a long time ago, but these speculations have never been substantiated. In any case, because of the difficulties in detecting and tracing the bio-speck and because it has 100% fatality rate, the bio-speck has fascinated both military researchers and terrorist groups, both of which are eager to get their hands on the speck.
The space tower of Taisy Prime has today been converted into a huge research facility, where the Caldari are fervently trying to get to know everything there is about this curious biological speck. Kyonoke Pit itself has been sealed of and remains in a permanent quarantine. Caldari police vessels guarding the mining station make sure that no one without the proper authorization is allowed near it. Some two years ago an unknown group managed to infiltrate the security parameter around the Pit on two ships and entered the station. In addition to acquiring samples of the bio-speck, the group loaded their cargo holds with the highly valuable tasc from the station’s vast storage vaults. But on their way out the bandits started showing the symptoms of being infected by the deadly protein. One of the ships crashed back into the Pit after disembarking, severely damaging the station and completely destroying the ship. The other ship managed to escape the investigating Caldari vessels, but it disappeared without a trace in an asteroid field and has not been heard from since. Today, debris and dead bodies from the Pit float around it, making it even more hazardous for ships to approach the crumbling mining installation. This, and tighter security measures by the Caldari, have prevented anyone else from making a raid on the Pit.
Soon after the empires initiated contact with each other they recognized the need for independent institutions, jointly run by all the empires, to handle the numerous issues regarding the relationships between them, such as trade, monetary policies, crime-fighting, and so on. The earliest forms of these organizations were established decades ago and now there are a few dozen that exist of various size. All of the organizations are controlled by a central organization, called Consolidated Cooperation and Relations Command, or CONCORD.
One of the largest and most powerful branches of CONCORD is the Directive Enforcement Department (DED). DED is the police force of CONCORD and is by far the strongest armed force in the world of EVE that doesn’t pledge fealty to any one empire. The main responsibility of the DED is to track high-profile criminals. For this they often hire independent contractors (better known as bounty hunters). The DED handles the licenses and legal issues of all bounty hunters for the empires, although some of the empires have been known to bypass the DED in special circumstances. Also, the most notorious criminals are marked as free-for-all targets by the DED.
Among the other responsibilities of the DED is aiding customs officials in patrolling areas where smuggling is rife. The DED ships are usually equipped with the latest and greatest in surveillance technology, so their service is always a great support for customs patrols, especially because they are incorruptible. In addition, the DED takes care of all kinds of security issues regarding meetings and conferences between the empires, they lend ships for operations by the other branches of the CONCORD, and they often support local law enforcement in dealing with large-scale crime activity or similar matters. For this the DED often uses their special force unit, named Special Affairs for Regulations & Order, or SARO. The SARO is one of the toughest police units around and are notorious for their brutal, but efficient, methods. They’re mostly used in hostage situations, for the assault of heavily armed pirate havens, and similar tasks.
The DED’s jurisdiction is limited to space and this has often put severe limits on their operations. However, in recent years, the DED has increasingly been authorized to operate in stations and on planets, and the result is a much more effective fight against organized crime. But even if the DED is getting more and more efficient in dealing with criminals within empire borders, they have yet to gain any significant foothold in the outer regions where empire presence is almost nonexistent. Also, the power of DED, and in fact the whole of CONCORD, differs widely between the various empires, or even between different regions of any one empire, as local governments or magnates often oppose strong DED presence for one reason or another
What if Truth was like a tiny speck of sand?
A speck that has been washed and weighed, polished, smoothed and curbed into one shiny point, the Universal Truth.
What if we could take this grain of sand and collect it into a book? We would treasure the book like our own life. We would lock it with the purpose of our mind.
And when we craved the truth we would open it up and let the grains wash over us. We would soak ourselves in its depth and bask in its radiance.
But the book is flawed. We can take more truth from it than we have earned. And soon we would be turning empty pages.
Thus the search begins. The search for the truth; the truth we crave; the truth that has the only meaningful value in an otherwise meaningless world.
The search continues, it goes on and on. In this search for the ultimate truth everything is allowed. We learn to lie and cheat in hope of progress. We see no success, no breakthrough of any kind.
We’re flooded by substitute truth, made up truth, whose only purpose is to sooth us and lull us.
Absolute truth loses its meaning. There is no absolute truth, only greater and lesser truth. We’ve lost our standards, we’ve lost our talent to distinguish what is real from what is deception. We no longer know the difference between the right truth and the wrong truth. All we care for is truth in any form and any guise; corrupted, filthy truth, we want it all, need it all.
So this truth can make us free, like any other truth. Maybe this substitute truth suffices? Maybe.
But when we’ve become enslaved to this freedom, then it is freedom no longer.
It is the worst kind of prison.
A prison with no walls and no chains. We cannot break free for we cannot see what binds us.
We talk of freedom like it was something to hope for. I hope real freedom never finds us, because we wouldn’t know what to do with it.
Yet we continue the search, for the searching has become a way of life for us. We know no other. It is what we’ve become.
Let us only hope the search never ends, that the Absolute Truth stays hidden forever. For if the search ends, we end.
Then we become nothing more than dust, specks of sand on the shore of universal lie.
And maybe, just maybe, this has already happened.
The author of this prose is Gorda Hoje, a Jovian philanthropist that died more than 300 years ago. Hoje was a novelty in his time and age, and his works, which ranged from cryptic philosophical texts to meticulous science papers, were generally regarded as too eccentric and absurd to have any real value. In his lifetime, Hoje acted as a mentor to many of the greatest Jovian minds of the younger generation, among them Ior Labron, the founder of the Society of Conscious Thought. After Hoje’s death, his followers started to promote his works in earnest and Hoje is today regarded as one of the most profound and influential of Jovian intellectuals.
In a mass manufacturing and marketing society like that in the world of EVE, everything that is for one reason or another only found in short supply tends to become more sought after because of the rarity factor alone. This is especially true in the field of gourmet cooking, where the finest restaurants compete in offering the most exotic food there is.
The eggs of the Hanging Long-limb are among the most sought after delicacies in these fancy restaurants. This is because the Hanging Long-limb is only found on one planet, Theruesse IV in the Theruesse system, located within the borders of the Gallente Federation. The Hanging Long-limb belongs to the Long-limb family of species, which are also only found there. The planet is almost entirely covered with inhospitable marshy jungles and the methane filled atmosphere is unbreathable by humans. The Hanging Long-limb gets its name from its habit of hanging by its hooked tail from branches that slope over water. It then uses its long claws to catch small fish and other amphibian animals.
The Hanging Long-limb lays its eggs in thousands at a time in a cluster, usually attached beneath a branch. It is this egg-cluster, or roe, that humans so eagerly seek. The main reason why the roe of the Hanging Long-limb is so rare is because no one has succeeded in breeding the species outside their natural habitat. Many individuals and companies have through the years attempted to simulate the environment on the planet in order to mass breed the Hanging Long-limb, but without success. Similarly, all attempts to artificially generate or clone the eggs have only met with very limited success and such products are regarded as vastly inferior to the real thing.
Most of the restaurants offering Hanging Long-limb roe are situated within the Gallente Federation, as the demand for exotic food is highest there. These restaurants are frequented by the upper strata of Gallentean society: industrial tycoons, celebrities and the idle rich. Capsuleers, always rich though rarely idle, are also apt to be seen at these places
The most obvious problem in inter-racial communication is the language difference. All the major races in EVE speak their own language and all attempts to make one the lingua franca have failed because of stubbornness over accepting any one language as the dominant one. Amarish, the language of the largest empire, is obviously the most common language, especially as most Minmatars also speak the language. But the Gallenteans refuse to acknowledge Amarish as the official language in inter-racial communications as they don’t want to give the Amarr Empire the political prestige that would follow. On the other hand, the language of the Gallente Federation (Gallentean) is by far the most common second language, largely because of their very influential entertainment industry. But the Caldari absolutely refuse to speak Gallentean and the Amarrians are also not too keen on it for the same reason that the Gallenteans won’t speak Amarish.
This means that most high-profile discussions between representatives of the empires, such as in the numerous inter-racial organizations, rely heavily on interpreters. But in one field the language a person knows has become irrelevant and the field is that of a space captain.
The unique nature of the capsule with its sophisticated neural rigging gives ship captains the option to link their minds do all kinds of computer systems, which they can use to their advantage. One of these devices that is today a standard feature in all capsules is the translator module.
The translator module is a software module that is a part of the communication system of the ship. It intercepts all incoming communications and translates them into the language preferred by the captain. The first translators were pretty lousy by today’s standard, they could only translate written communications and frequently messed up the text. But the latest versions are able to translate voice as well as text and have become very good at projecting mood-swings, slang, weird accents and such, for a near perfect translation. With the steady increase in cyber-implants these translators have begun appearing outside the capsule as well and many predict that within a few years translators will make the debate over which language should prevail in inter-racial communication a futile one.
The Gallentean entertainment industry is highly competitive and show biz companies are willing to do anything to gain an edge over their competitors. The size of the entertainment industry means that a mere 1% shift in market share means billions in extra revenue. This has led many companies to employ questionable methods, such as espionage and sabotage, while others engage in a constant technological race. An example of the latter is Egonics.
Egonics Incorporated is a fifty year old company that today specializes in making and distributing music that fits each and everyone’s personal taste. There are a few essential steps in this process.
First of all, Egonics runs and maintains a huge database, containing personal profiles of billions of people. The Egonics database is arguably the largest database of personal information owned by a non-governmental company. At first, Egonics planned to use this database for numerous products, but only the musical one became truly successful. Early on, conservatists within the Gallentean government vehemently opposed the data gathering of Egonics, but the company ingeniously used this opposition to their advantage by rallying the young people to their cause, advocating personal freedom of all things. This was one of the major factors in the subsequent growth of the company and the ‘Egone’ became a symbol of liberty among young people everywhere.
The information in the Egonics database is extremely detailed, it lists both the social status of a person: job, education, marital status and so on, but also very thorough genealogical and biological data, including DNA samples. Egonics uses every method possible to enlarge their database and keep it up to date. Some of these methods are frowned upon by many, but others find it good how dedicated the company is in making sure the customer gets exactly what he likes and there are some that thrive on selling Egonics DNA samples from people not in their vast database.
Secondly, Egonics employ thousands of sound engineers and musicians that are constantly creating music according to the specs of a certain group of customers. Egonics recognizes hundreds of distinct taste patterns in the populace and they make sure that everybody can find music that caters to their very special preferences, thus Egonics publish thousands of songs every single day. Although the musicians employed by Egonics are total non-entities while in its service, they gain invaluable experience during their stay and a number of them have gone onto fame after their stint there.
And finally, Egonics use a unique method in distributing their music to their customers. The Egone may look like a head ornament instead of a headphone. This is because it doesn’t broadcast sound to the ears as normal headphones do, but instead it projects the music directly to the zones in the brain that govern hearing, bypassing the ear altogether. This has many obvious advantages, both for Egonics and the customer. Most importantly, there is no danger of illegal copying and distribution, as there is no actual sound to record. Also, there is no noise pollution and people can easily converse with each other as the ears are clear.
Music is broadcasted to the Egone over wavelength, similar to radio, so in effect every Egonics customer is listening to his own personal radio station, playing only those songs he likes and has paid for.
All in all, Egonics is steadily increasing their popularity, although there are many that find the ruthless data gathering and intrusive broadcasting methods to their disliking. The Amarr Empire has for instance forbidden Egonics to operate within their boundaries.
Nocxium is one of the most sought-after materials around, as it’s one of the vital ingredients for capsule production. Due to the fact that this strange matter forms only during supernovas, it can only be found in a few exclusive regions. As the nocxium breaks down when under intense heat and pressure, it only exists in asteroid fields and not in larger stellar objects. A few years ago numerous asteroids containing nocxium were discovered in the extensive Miennue cloud ring just outside the jurisdiction of the Gallente Federation, propelling the otherwise desolate cloud ring into the international political limelight.
Thousands of prospectors have flocked to Miennue since nocxium was first discovered there, but as always only a handful reap the rewards of their efforts. Yani Sar Arteu was one of the few to hit the jackpot big time. He and his small company named Outer Ring Excavations recently stumbled across an asteroid reportedly containing the biggest nocxium deposit ever found in this region. Although rumors abound nothing has been confirmed, as only Arteu and his companions have seen this alleged super-asteroid and are not about to disclose its location. In fact, they only spend the minority of their time actually mining the asteroid, hunting it down on weekly excavation expeditions. This is because they don’t want to flood the market with nocxium, thus bringing down the price. In between, they spend their energy playing elaborate games of hide-and-seek with jealous competitors eager to get their hands on the asteroid.
The empires monitor the goings-on in Miennue closely and all of them have made both overt and covert proposals to Outer Ring Excavations, offering security for a stake in the company. Outer Ring Excavations have rejected all these offers, but ever-increasing pressure from competitors is making it harder and harder for them to keep their secret safe much longer. Sooner or later, one of the numerous methods employed by those pursuing the asteroid -- bribes, threats, tracking devices, bugs -- is bound to unveil the secret that Arteu has so meticulously kept concealed. In the meantime, Arteu and Outer Ring Excavations are getting richer -- fantastically so -- by the minute.
For most of the Minmatar tribes the act of painting one’s face before going into battle is an age-old tradition. In days past, some of the more warlike tribes took this a step further by tattooing their faces in the same style, giving them what effectively amounted to permanent war paint. The main disadvantage of these facial war tattoos was obviously that they were a permanent feature. This made their usage quite a bit less common -- after all, portraying as aggressive a state to others as the war paints represented did not lend itself equally well to all forms of interpersonal communication.
But high-tech developments have opened up a new way of expressing one’s aggressive intentions. The latest fad in tattooing is so-called nano-tattooing. The nano-tattoos are very small microchips, surgically implanted between the epidermal and dermal layers of the skin. These microchips are connected to the nervous system via the hair and sweat glands' paravertebral ganglia, and are activated when the host becomes emotionally upset or excited. When active, the microchips emit dark or light color (depending on the person's skin color), resulting in patterns appearing on the face.
These nano-technology war tattoos come in various versions. The most common ones link the microchips' activation directly to the host's emotional state, making it necessary for the host to control their own feelings if they want to influence the appearance and disappearance of the war tattoos. Other versions allow the person direct conscious control over activation, but Matari tend to frown upon those, the general consensus being that these more user-friendly chips suggest a lack of self-discipline in the host.
Since they first arrived on the open market a decade ago, the nano war tattoos have taken Minmatar society by storm. They are especially popular among the younger generation of aviation and space faring personnel. While the custom has spread to other races, most notably the Gallenteans, it is still almost exclusively confined to the Matari.
Jirai Laitanen and Korako Kosakami, today better known by the nicknames they gave themselves: Fatal and the Rabbit, began their careers as promising space ship captains in the 37th (Octopus) Squadron of the Caldari Navy. Laitanen was a shrewd and gifted captain, with a glib tongue and charismatic smile. Many expected him to reach a position of authority in the end. But he was also vain and greedy; traits that led to his eventual desertion. Kosakami was much more introvert than his friend Laitanen, but he had a brilliant mind and was a technical wizard.
When, in the space of one week, Laitanen was passed over for promotion and Kosakami was blamed for a lethal crash landing, the two friends decided to desert. They stole a couple of Condor-class frigates, the same they still use today, and set off to a pirate-infested sector between Caldari and Gallente space. This took place a decade ago.
It didn’t take long for them to establish themselves among the criminal society and few months after their arrival they’d set up their own criminal organization, called the Guristas, which is an amalgamation of two Caldari words meaning ‘naughty people’ and is also a slang term for ‘gang’.
The Guristas are famous for their raids into civilized territory, something that very few pirate clans are willing or able to do. The mission of these raids is most often simply to steal cargo or passengers (for ransom) from freighters, but on numerous occasions their main intention seems to be to sabotage empire installations (mining facilities, sentry guns, and the like). This has led to speculations that some unscrupulous empire companies or even governments are hiring the Guristas to take out property of the competition.
But by far the most celebrated of the Gurista raids was when they kidnapped the Gallentean ambassador to the Caldari State and received an enormous ransom from his family. The kidnapping itself was a brilliant feat and clearly demonstrated that Fatal and the Rabbit were far from being the stereotypical brainless brats that most people regarded pirates to be.
Ambassador Luecin Rileau, son of the diamond-king Darouen Rileau, had only one noticeable vice, and that was gambling. His gambling fascination was probably the main reason why he had sought to become the Gallentean ambassador to the Caldari State, a notoriously tricky position. Ambassador Rileau frequented the Grand Tiegjon Casino in the Echelon Entertainment Studio station in the Caldari system of Vellaine. It was there that Fatal and the Rabbit struck.
The two of them docked at the station under in disguise. The Rabbit (Kosakami) stayed behind in the ship while Fatal (Laitanen) entered the casino. Fatal involved himself in a game of Pettokori, a popular electro-board gambling game, which Rileau was participating in. In the course of the game, Fatal deliberately lost money to the ambassador and finally, when he’d run out of money, Fatal offered his ship to the ambassador. The ambassador accepted and proceeded to win the game. Fatal offered to show the ambassador his newly won ship and Rileau, accompanied by several bulky bodyguards, accepted.
But while the game was underway the Rabbit had been busy. He rigged the boarding ramp to the ship with tanks filled with sleeping gas. Needless to say, when the ambassador and his bodyguards entered the boarding ramp, they were promptly put to sleep. Ambassador Rileau was then carried into the ship and Fatal and the Rabbit innocently left the station. It was only when another ship docked in the same berth an hour later and discovered the boarding ramp full of snoring bodyguards that the alarm was raised, but by then the kidnappers were long gone.
The Gallente Federation was unable to apprehend the culprits and in the end the ambassador’s family paid a huge ransom in uncut diamonds to the Guristas. All this drama received a great deal of media attention and even if Fatal and the Rabbit relished the attention for a time, in the end it only hampered them. Being the most notorious criminal in the world of EVE has a downside, mainly that traveling around is not as easy as it used to be. This has forced the Guristas to lay low for the past few months.
Quafe is the name of the most popular soft drink in the universe, manufactured by a Gallentean company bearing the same name. It first appeared two centuries ago and, like so many soft drinks, was initially intended as medicine for indigestion and a tender stomach. The refreshing effects of the drink appealed to everyone, however, and the drink fast became hugely popular.
Quafe is one of the most widely recognized brands in the whole universe and can be found virtually everywhere. The marketing gurus at the Quafe Company have often joked that the drink was the best Gallente ambassador there ever was, and an incident between the Gallente Federation and the Amarr Empire ten years ago showed these claims to be more than just amusing hype. At the time, the Federation and the Empire clashed over ownership of the mineral rich system Girani-Fa, located close to both their borders. After the Empire discontinued negotiations with the Federation delegation, the dispute seemed to be headed straight for all-out war.
But a few days later an extraordinary thing happened. The Amarrians declared that while they were ready to continue negotiations, they would only conduct them with representatives from the Quafe Company, claiming the latter were the only group within the Gallente Federation with enough vested interest on both sides of the border to be able to look at the matter from a neutral perspective. The Gallente government, looking to avoid war, agreed to these requests and so a delegation made up of top Quafe Company executives was sent to meet with the Amarrian delegation. A few weeks later an agreement was reached: the system was to come under Gallentean control, but a fixed amount of minerals was to be sold to the Amarrians each year at cost price.
The Girani-Fa incident, as it has become known, clearly demonstrates the respect consumers have for the Quafe name and how strongly the company has managed to penetrate into every market. A further indication of this is the fact that the Quafe Company is the only Gallentean company that’s been given corporation status within the Caldari State.
This amazing success, which has mostly come about in the last three decades or so, can be largely accredited to one man: Poire Viladillet, CEO of the Quafe Company for the past 35 years. Under his leadership the company has ascended from a position as one of several leading soft drink manufacturers into clear and undisputed market supremacy.
A fair proportion of the Amarr Empire still consists today of slaves, mainly of Minmatar origin. Through the ages the Amarrians have employed various methods of keeping the slaves in line. Many of them are deemed, by the standards of the Gallenteans and others, to be highly immoral and cruel. One of the more recent and controversial methods is called after the antidote drug involved - Vitoc.
With the Vitoc method, slaves are injected with a toxic chemical substance that is fatal unless the recipient receives a constant supply of an antidote. The method first appeared a few centuries ago when the Amarrians started manning some of their space ships with slaves. As space crew the slaves had to be cajoled into doing complex, often independent work, making older methods of slave control undesirable. Although the more conventional ways of subduing slaves with force (actual or threat of) are still widely used in other forced labor areas, the Vitoc method has proven itself admirably for the fleet.
There are two major downsides to the Vitoc method: the method works only as long as the toxic substances remain in the body, and as long as there is no alternative way for a slave to receive the antidote. If either applies, a slave can obviously not be forced to do anything.
For the past decades a fierce R&D battle has taken place between the Amarr Empire on one hand and the Minmatar Republic and the Gallente Federation on the other. The Amarrians are constantly upgrading and altering the toxic chemicals they use on the slaves, while the others are struggling to research and manufacture a permanent remedy. For many years this battle waxed and waned, with the Amarrians releasing a new version every few years, but the others managing to discover a remedy shortly thereafter.
But then, a little more than a decade ago, the Amarrians introduced a new and revolutionary toxic drug, which resembles a virus in many ways, and no cure has yet been found for it. This is mainly due to the erratic nature of the drug, which constantly changes its appearance and behavior on a regular basis. These changes seem to be either controlled, or at least predicted by the Amarrians, as they always seem to have the right antidote for their own use out in time before the toxin changes again. Thus, the Minmatars and the Gallenteans are constantly chasing a ghost - a toxic virus that shifts into something completely different just when they think they’ve finally nailed it down.
There are more novel features about this new toxic chemical, letting many belief that either an Amarrian scientist genius suddenly appeared or the Amarrians got some crucial help from the outside; the Caldari and even the Jovians have been mentioned in this regard. One of the additional features in the new virus is that the resulting death is much more horrifying now; those that fail to get antidote will suffer excruciating pain that can last for days before death finally comes. With the older versions, death by lack of antidote was never so horrible, sometimes even peaceful. This led to mass-suicides at times when slave crews refused to take the antidote; preferring death over humiliating slavery. Now, although still an option, few people are brave enough to dare it. Another new feature is the very pleasurable side-effect created by the antidote: for the first few hours after injection the receiver gets a very powerful euphoric sensation - as long as he is affected by the toxic virus. Both these extra features have helped bind the slaves to the drug, and thus to their slave-masters.
The transformation of the struggle this past decade has been like a god’s gift for the pirate and smuggling industry. Not only is it much easier for this industry to quickly and repeatedly adapt to the ever-changing products (the antidote in this case) than for conventional industries, but the fact that no permanent cure for the new drug had been found means that the ever-increasing number of newly freed Minmatar slaves still need the antidote to survive - hence creating a thriving business outside the Amarr Empire for the antidote for the first time. A lot of people have made fortune beyond their dreams by dealing in the Vitoc antidote, but just as many have been ruined when all their expensive antidote stock became obsolete due to a sudden change in the toxic virus.
The Society of Conscious Thought, or SCT, was founded three centuries ago by the Jovian Ior Labron. As a rule, Jovians are not very spiritually inclined, but those Jovians that are take to their spirituality with the same vigor and zeal as to everything else. The SCT has, through the ages, acted as the outlet for the spiritual needs of the Jovians, although that role is only a secondary one today.
The Society’s story is a long and complex one. Starting out as a cult created to explore humanity's spiritual and religious feelings and needs (with the primary aim of discovering the meaning of life, no less), it later expanded into the realm of politics and, for a little while, effectively became Jovian society's shadow government. This, however, did not last for long; other political factions joined together to break their power, with the result that the Society was banned for a considerable period of time. Yet they still lurked in obscurity, reverting back to their mystical past. As the years passed the Society again began to exert itself, but wisely and carefully this time, making sure to just skirt the borders of the hostile political arena.
Once again, the search for spiritual enlightenment became the focus of the SCT. They embarked on a journey of frenzied technological research on the matter, resulting in some very interesting theories and facts on the nature of man and his connection to the universe.
The SCT had, in the traditional way of secluded spiritual sects, sought refuge in remote areas, building their residences there. Even while the Society was most active in politics, they still maintained their homes far away from large human settlements, favoring isolated regions planet-side or in deep space. Only in recent years has the SCT become a little less reclusive, setting up offices in urban settlements in order to increase their visibility to the general public.
In their remote abodes the Society has built up mini-societies emphasizing self-sufficiency; a trait strong among the Jovians. These sprawling places, often resembling huge fortresses, house everything from living quarters and food-growing facilities to laboratories and libraries. Each enclave, called a kitz, is a separate entity, but communication between kitzes is frequent.
Each kitz maintains a school for educating their members in the scholarly or scientific fields. At first, all the students were children of SCT members, but a few decades ago the Society started admitting, each year, a small number of children from 'outside,' even non-Jovian ones. The applicants are chosen by the Society and their choices seem to many to be almost random, because there is no visible pattern as to who gets in: neither race, gender, social standing, nor even talent and intelligence by themselves seem to play instrumental roles. Many wealthy parents have tried to increase their child’s chances by donating large sums of money to the SCT, but statistics have shown that this has little or no effect.
In any case, most people agree that the education the children receive within the Society’s walls is first-class and every graduate is a sought-after employee anywhere he or she goes. An astonishing proportion of SCT graduates reach a prominent position later in life, becoming presidents of multi-stellar corporations or governmental ministers. Little wonder, then, that people regard the SCT schools as breeding grounds for world leaders.
Dam-Torsad - the Imperial City of the Amarr Empire - marked me. It marked me even though I consciously tried to fight its corrupted presence. It is built on memories - nightmares, really - and you can’t stop them from perverting your mind in the end. For fifty long years I’ve struggled to rid myself of those haunted memories, memories of a human society turned sour and bitter. I may have escaped the oppressive walls of the city, but the vivid memories will always remain. Memories of a city more like a monument than a thriving metropolis; of people saturated with its sluggish nature, their minds weighed down with traditions and customs so strong, so dominant, that it was like their ancestors of a thousand years ago were living their lives through them.
I couldn’t fail to notice - almost immediately - the injustice entrenched in the society. The Holders tread on the Commoners, which in turn tread on the slaves. Talent means nothing; people are judged solely by their social position. The only merits nurtured are backstabbing and back-nagging. The twisted old Holders are deeply envious of zealous young upstarts and find sick pleasure in squashing them. And yet the Commoners look with awe up to the Holders, craving their position and power, but bound still by tradition more sturdy than any iron shackle.
Progress is a term alien to the Amarrians. It’s almost like this huge empire was built on pure coincidence and luck. But once you get to know their intricate system you get the feeling that they’re like this great big beast trudging heedlessly onwards, trampling any opposition. Their advancements are not by leaps and bounds, but rather through deliberate and articulate planning that can span decades, even centuries. Getting caught in the finely woven spider-webs of a Holder can trap more than just you - it can trap your children and your children’s children. Getting out is not a problem. It’s getting out alive that's troublesome.
My years in Dam-Torsad made me loathe and despise the Amarrians. Their society is in so many ways radically different from the Gallentean one. But I also learned never to underestimate the Amarrians. In their own way they’re ruthlessly efficient, and I cannot help but feel in awe of all their accomplishments through the ages.
Excerpt from the autobiography of Yanou Lautere,
First Gallente ambassador to the Amarrians
Mind Clash is a very popular sport throughout known space. It is as enthusiastically played in the royal court on Amarr Prime as in the gambling halls of the Caldari. The Clash Masters – the best players from around the worlds – are superstars, awed and adored equally among Gallentean yuppies and Minmatar punks.
The game itself evolved from a simple computer game called Clash of Wits, where two participants played the roles of puppet masters, using various kinds of creatures and forces to attack each other until either one of them caved in. The game was fairly popular among teenagers and young adolescents, but not a phenomenon in any sense of the word.
The extensive advances made in neural- and cyber-technology through the years then paved the way for a new version of the game, where the players didn’t control a computer-generated puppet master, but rather stepped into the role of puppet-master themselves. The illusions – fantastical creatures, monsters, phenomena – were still only bits and bytes in a computer, but due to the strength of the connection between the mind and the machine, this didn’t make them any less dangerous to a puppet master made of flesh and blood. Even if participants couldn’t be ripped to pieces in the literal sense, the potential psycho-trauma caused by the constant barrage on the brain could easily reduce a stout man to a whimpering wreck in mere moments.
Actually, the illusory creatures and phenomena are only there for the show – doing nothing by themselves, they simply portray in visual terms what actually is going on behind the scenes in the minds of the participants. The actions and state of the illusion give ample indication of the actual events of the struggle to the spectators. These illusions are, in modern arenas, often projected as holograms above the participants. All the stars of the game have their own exclusive repertoire of personally trademarked illusions. This, coupled with flashy outfits and catchy nicknames, makes each of the major stars easily distinguishable to the fans. In addition to the illusions huge screens dot the arenas where duels are held, broadcasting images and information to the masses ogling the match. These consist mainly of things like facial close-ups of the sweating contestants, or detailed data-charts on the status of their mental and bodily state.
The new version of the game was called Mind Clash. Since its release over a century ago the game has grown into a full-fledged sport, with billions of fans and billions in revenue generated. The inevitable development has been that Mind Clash is now one of the biggest entertainment forms around – with all the stardom, hangers-on, aspiration dreams, gambling and showmanship that goes with it. For many, the Worlds Championship is the major event of each calendar year. During that massive event, the sixteen best players from all around the star cluster gather to slug it out. Although rumors of fixed matches and rigged results have somewhat tainted the image of the event (and the sport as a whole), it remains a huge attraction for more or less everybody, and Mind Clash betting is one of the favorite pastimes of billions of people.
The current Mind Clash Worlds Champion is Joelyn Donalokos, a Gallentean of Intaki ancestry. Donalokos, a 7-year veteran Clash Master, is the Worlds Champion of the last two contests and has for the last three years topped the Clash Masters' income list. Donalokos’ specialty is his Blue Tiger illusion, something which has become one of the most widely-recognized symbols in the whole world.
A Fedo is a fairly small (ca. 30-50 cm long, 20-40 cm high) animal originating in underground caves on the planet Palpis. The planet was settled by the Amarrians long ago, and the Fedo has spread with Amarr vessels throughout the galaxy cluster ever since.
The Fedo is an omnivorous, sponge-like creature. It has reddish skin and numerous small claw-like tentacles which it uses to move around and protect itself. A primitive being, the Fedo's method of eating and absorbing nutrition is slow and inefficient. This means that food stays for a long time in the Fedo’s body, and will most often have rotted or turned foul before the animal passes it out of its system. The Fedos eject fumes from their body which, for the reasons explained above, have a most horrible odor. The Fedos possess a fantastic sense of smell and so use these fumes to communicate with each other; they are however both blind and deaf, having no eyes or ears. The mouth is located on the underside of the beast, and the Fedo feeds by positioning itself over the food and lowering itself down on it.
Fedos are an incredibly strong and resilient species. They can live in total vacuum for several hours before succumbing to the cold and lack of oxygen. Some Matari have used this fact to their advantage, employing Fedos on many of their ships for cleaning and garbage disposal. The Fedos are especially useful in that they can clean the ship on the outside as well as the inside; they can get to hard-to-reach areas on the ship and, most importantly, will exterminate many of the pesky bacteria commonly found on space ships. The Matari feed the Fedos with every scrap of waste produced on the ship, letting the beasts roam free around the vessel and even outside it. This saves money, but the downside is the foul stench produced by the Fedos, something which discourages most everybody from using them.
There is a distinct difference between male and female Fedos. The female is slightly larger and has redder skin. It has a point-like tail or sting, approx. 10 cm long. The female Fedo can emit highly toxic fumes from a small opening at the end of the tail, which can cause intense skin irritation and discomfort for a human. For this reason, only male Fedos are used as ship cleaners. Most ships employing Fedos have a special nursery room where female Fedos are kept to replenish the on-board Fedo stock. This is necessary as the Fedo's life cycle is only a few weeks long.
