LotS/The Story/Scaean Gates

Intro=
"Never to bid good-bye

Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all."

-- Thomas Hardy, The Going

It begins with a funeral.

No, that's not right... There were things before. Events leading up to this moment. They just seem meaningless, cerebral shadows flitting beyond the periphery of reason. The past has tumbled into a black sea, castles of memory and history submerged and subsumed by tenebrous waves. You have to think, to concentrate, to remember that the universe didn't begin with mourning and mourners, grief and grievers. But it's hard while two coffins stand before you, their occupants laid out in taunting fabrications of peaceful repose, forcing your eyes and mind to follow bitter paths.

Things before...

The corridor was empty. Hollow. There was no one to greet you, no watchful soul standing vigil to await your decision. It was as though the galaxy had forgotten about you, turned a blind eye to your turmoil -- scorning your existence, informing you that the choice which had carried such immense, incalculable magnitude in your little mortal mind was but a mote in the eyes of creation.

In that moment the room behind you seemed to beckon, trying to draw you back into the shadowy depths where you'd intended and prepared to die. The doorway was still open, responding to your proximity -- a mouth daubed with black lipstick, a dark lover offering to kiss your soul before swallowing it into merciful oblivion. But it was too late. You'd made your decision, painful but unalterable.

So you stepped into bright bleakness, and the door slid shut behind you with the softest of sighs.

Corridor after corridor flowed by, devoid of life. Not even the hard metal of a robot appeared before you, to prove that the ship was anything but a silent tomb and you a phantom left wandering its passages. But at last you reached the medical bays. There at last was life, or its remnants -- broken bodies to greet your broken soul.

A doctor looked up from her terminal when you entered the first chamber. Her eyes bulged and her mouth gaped as though in a silent scream. Fear. Of course. She saw what you did. The whole galaxy saw...

You freed her from your gaze and walked across the room. You heard her scurrying away behind you, footsteps drumming their retreat out into the corridor and away into obscurity. No matter. You weren't there for her.

Viscous green fluid encased the muscular frame in the tank, enveloping a body that seemed mighty and monstrous even here in this place of weakness and frailty. Tubes sucked at his flesh like impotent leeches, their snaking lengths passing through the thick glass and joining the machines which hummed and flickered outside the liquid's embrace. Your skin itched in subconscious remembrance, half-forgotten sympathy. Your mind rebelled against the memories. Back when you thought she was lost... A sliver of anguish, adumbration of what was to come.

Little robots floated around him, mechanical beings with bodies like eggs and spindly arms that ended in strange contraptions. They were idle, pressed up against the edges of the tank like minnows trying to keep their distance from a shark. Their work was done. Cybernetics had been repaired -- cold, unfeeling metal and circuits fixed whilst flesh still languished in the fluid's embrace and succumbed to its ministrations.

"Ragnar!" you called. Then once more, this time through the implant in your throat: "Ragnar!"

His eyes opened in the greenness, above the respirator that masked the lower half of his face. They fastened on yours, focusing and understanding.

The Niflung's fist clenched and rose. The glass broke, thick fragments clattering on the floor before being drowned in the emerald wave that gushed forth, lapped across and around your boots. Robots tumbled into the escaping sea with little whines of protestation.

He grabbed at the respirator, tore it from his face.

"I'm ready," he said.

He strode from the tank's exsanguinated carcass. The tubes fell away and dangled in sadness, their thankless work rebuffed.

You found Talia next. She was in her quarters, lying on her bed -- disgorged by her own healing tank, spat out into the world to fend for herself like a child flung from the womb. She still wore the infirmary gown. The gunslinger sat up, staring at you with red eyes. Sad, surprised, accusing eyes.

"I... I thought..."

You said nothing. What could you have said? She knew. Of course she knew what you intended to do. She expected you to abandon her, desert her, leave her to pick up the pieces as best she could. And you would have done.

She got up, pulled you into a hug. The feel of her warmth, of her wet cheek against yours, made your selfishness claw at your heart. You would have left her... And even now part of you wishes that you had.

Ragnar was waiting in the corridor when the two of you came out, the gunslinger dressed and armed, her eyes dry. He bent his head towards her ear when she put her arms around him. You turned away, before your aural implant could betray his whisper.

The three of you paused outside Telemachus' quarters for a long moment, wordless, unsure. Talia was the first to move towards the door. But you caught her arm with a gentle tug. A guilty memory pierced you, of a time when you abandoned him to his sorrow -- shirking the unpleasant burden, leaving it to another. No... You wouldn't do that again. He deserved better from you. They all did.

So you entered instead.

The room was dark, just like yours was, just like Talia's. All three of you had wrapped yourselves in shadows, shied away from the light. Or so you thought. But then you realized that you were alone, the gloom around you untenanted.

Of course... He would have gone somewhere else.

When you arrived at the bay you didn't hesitate. You gestured for the others to remain while you went in. There it was... The hulking metal goliath, standing unmoved and untroubled.

"Tel?"

The cockpit was black, its filters cranked up to shut out the world. But you knew all the same. So you waited. And at last the canopy opened, unsealing the young prince's cocoon. You climbed up to sit beside him, unwilling to make him leave his sanctum just yet.

There were no tears. And you hoped that it was because he'd already cried them and wiped them away, not because life had succeeded in deadening him with its endless barrage of tragedies. His mother, his father, and now her... So much suffering for so short a life. Loved ones leaving him in turn. Just as you were going to do.

He looked at you. Uncertainty trembled on his lips. You read it in his eyes. As young as he is, he was wise enough, unselfish enough, to know that your grief was greater than his. That realization was perhaps the most heartbreaking of all.

There was a moment's hesitation when he left the cockpit. But he clambered down from the mech and walked away at your side.

Lu Bu proved the most difficult to find. The engineer who'd overseen his repairs could only tell you that he left the moment the work was finished, without saying a word. In the end you had to ask one of the droids tasked with monitoring the ship's camera network for information.

The answer was like a fresh wound.

The walk to the morgue passed in silence. When you arrived there you stood in the doorway, held at bay like a mythical fiend barred from crossing a threshold. You couldn't even bring yourself to look at the figures on the slabs, though each was shrouded by a white drape.

Your friend stood before them, his back to you, as motionless as a sculpture. His metal body, repaired and reconstructed, was as it had always been -- his bearing firm and upright, his gold plating proud and regal. Yet there was an indescribable misery that radiated from him.

None of you could bear to raise your voices and call out to him. Not there. To violate that quietness would have been wrong... almost blasphemous. But the robot turned around and came towards you. He fell into place without a word.

It wasn't until you were far away from that chamber that you spoke -- and then only to tell the others what you planned to do.

Wilex and Wu Tenchu were in the Chief Assembler's communications room. Both men looked impossibly ancient, the lines on their faces deep like knife wounds. Wilex's hair seemed hoarier than before, his frame gaunter. When they turned to you, staring from deadened eyes, you felt as if you were looking at a painting instead of beings of flesh and blood -- the eyes meeting yours only at the behest of an artist's skill.

"Have the Silver Shadow repaired," you said. "We're going to kill Councilor Dule."

Master Wu rose from his chair. He glided towards you with swift but sedate steps. The punch he threw was so fast that you felt the explosion in your jaw before you saw his arm move.

"You are the Imperial Jian of the Sian Empire," he hissed. "Carry out your duties, not your desires."

His features were impassive. But his eyes burned like twin infernos, raging battles, exploding stars.

And you bowed, for you knew he was right.

|-|

With Me or Against Me=
With Me or Against Me

It begins with a funeral...

Your career as Imperial Jian.

When Wu Tenchu first expounded his plan, laid out the machinations of a mind as wrathful as your own but far more cunning, you found this part abhorrent. To use Illaria's death as a weapon, a political tool... But she would have demanded no less. Duty. Cold, grinding duty. This is what it means to rule, as she was born to do and you're now compelled to do.

Grand Fabricator Marek offered you the use of any of TALOS' worlds for the ceremony. He promised to have thousands, humans and robots alike, toil night and day to build a replica of the imperial mausoleum -- a place to house the bodies in splendor until they could be moved to their rightful resting place on Sian. Other friends of the empire made similar offers. But you declined each in turn.

It was Master Wu who proposed this place, a decision born of both love and hate.

Earth. China. The cultural motherland of the Sian Empire. A shrine built by the imperial family as part of a public works program funded to glorify the settlement in which Daedun Qin was born.

A fitting substitute for the homeworld, but much more as well. It's a reminder of the ancient ties which unite humanity, the very same shared history that the Centurians are so vehement towards.

There are untold thousands outside, vast masses of humans bolstered by contingents from dozens of other species. Some have come to mourn, others to show their respect. Many are there simply for the sake of the spectacle, the knowledge that they're witnessing an event of historical import. You can't blame the lattermost group. Such is human nature. And their presence will be valuable, lend to the event's magnitude.

Those sat within this hall are no different. Every human faction save for the Centurians has sent their representatives, as have numerous alien powers. Heads of state and government, monarchs and commoners, generals and civilians, diplomats and warriors. All mingle upon the pews or stand waiting to make their way forward for a private farewell.

There are those who could justly call themselves friends of the Emperor or Princess, who may have encountered them on the turbulent tides of interstellar politics but formed bonds personal as well as professional -- drawn into friendship by his wisdom and honesty or her intelligence, compassion, warmth, and charisma. On their faces, though some conceal it beneath a façade of impassive strength and diplomatic detachment, you see echoes of the grief wound in crushing coils around your chest. With these you feel kinship, even as you recognize -- with more arrogance than envy -- that the friendship they had, the sorrow they have, are just faint shadows compared to yours.

Other men and women here assembled were never blessed enough to claim friendship with Illaria. Cheated by circumstance, kept away by political realities, they couldn't penetrate into such fortunate circles. But they admired her all the same, respected her talent and her courage. So they've come to mark her passing from this world, with honest if inadequate hearts. To these you feel gratitude and pity.

Then there are the interlopers. Just like the gawkers and spectacle chasers outside. No... worse. For they've had the audacity to trespass among those who loved her, so that they can sham pain, fabricate grief, that they might be seen to be here alongside the others. Them you despise. But they're necessary.

And your hatred is salved, left to smolder instead of blaze, by the knowledge that this ceremony isn't for you. Not for your friends and companions. You already said your goodbyes.

Things before...

Two coffins. Side by side.

At first you'd bristled at that, emotion drowning reason. He murdered her. Killer and killed. Slayer and slain. To look upon her was difficult enough. But him?

Yet Master Wu was intransigent.

"They were separated for long enough," he said. "I won't allow them to be parted again."

Then the wise mandarin's eyes softened. And you knew that their gentle but piercing gaze saw into your mind -- understood the deeper, darker reason for your resistance. His voice slipped from its firmness as he continued.

"He wouldn't have wished to live. Not after what they made him do."

He knew... Of course he knew. It hadn't escaped his sharp eyes and potent mind. The choice you made. The eyes...

The words brought unexpected comfort. Not for the idea they proffered. That was a mere bauble, a thought that had already entered your mind and failed to scratch the surface of your guilt. But from him, from the man who could claim the deepest ties of understanding and friendship with the late Emperor... Your secret was shattered, exposed and soothed -- at least for a time.

So both coffins rested in the little private shrine within the Sian embassy. A private funeral, far removed from the teeming spectacle that would take place on the next day. A moment for unguarded sincerity before the machinations you knew must follow.

There were no speeches. It wasn't a time for oratory, however well-intentioned. None of you had the tongue for it. There was only talk and tears. And promises. The others knew what was to come, and they swore that they would play their parts.

Artemis Kess, who had traveled across the galaxy to see the Princess one final time, told you that she would fight at your side when you made your move -- that she'd tear Dule's face from his skull. But you remembered how proud Illaria had been, how much happiness she had derived from knowing that Kess was free from the murderous life that had ensnared her for so long. The assassin wept as you told her this, as you declined her aid and spoke of Illaria's wishes for her. But she understood.

Towards the end of the night, when only a handful remained, you felt the soft pressure on your back -- like the firm but gentle touch of a comforting hand. You turned round. There was no one there. But something caught your eye. Around Illaria's neck, beneath the reconstructed face that pained you with its perfection, a swath of diamonds glittered. The Eyes of the Cosmos.

It begins with a funeral...

Your vengeance.

Funeral Games

You've practiced the speech, given voice to its words so often over the last few days that they're inscribed on your memory. With each repetition it became more eloquent, more powerful, and less meaningful. But only you and Wu Tenchu will know of the latter, will understand that what you're about to say is a carefully crafted weapon, a stratagem -- rendered hollow of the true emotions it retains as a veneer. Such is the nature of political oratory.

And so the words come without hesitation. Master Wu and the others prepared you well. The sea of upturned faces, the ordeal of being thrust into a spotlight you would much rather shun, are no match for their tutelage. You were made to study the lives and backgrounds of each person in this hall. Their strengths and foibles, ideologies and degeneracies... These things are known to you, creating a false intimacy which renders them harmless. Their scrutiny won't perturb you.

Even the sight of the frozen, angelic visage within the casket won't make you stumble. The mandarin, with callous pragmatism, made you rehearse in her presence. Emotion is important. But it must be controlled, directed, mastered. You don't have the luxury of spontaneous feeling, of permitting a sudden burst of misery to overwhelm you. Those things are denied to the Imperial Jian.

The words flow. As they must.

You know without a trace of pride that your delivery is perfect. Effortless. So automatic and instinctive that you don't even register the sentences as they rise to the surface of your mind and drift out from your lips. It's as though another woman is speaking in a far-off place, whilst you're left to observe the effect of her words upon the audience.

First comes sorrow.

The woman who's you but not you speaks of Illaria and the Emperor. She tells of the love between father and daughter, between rulers and their people. She weaves a wrenching, draining tale. And you see the effect of her handiwork. Façades of strength are cracking. Simulated grief gives way to the genuine article with such subtlety that you sense the surprise within confused hearts. Tears are conjured like spirits made manifest by occult happenings.

A stronger reaction that you'd intended or anticipated...

Your eyes find the woman in the audience, masking the search as part of an orator's roaming gaze. It wouldn't do to bring attention to her.

There she is. Sat next to one of the empire's diplomats, masquerading as his partner. Her attire is prim and proper, her beauty tamed into elegance and sophistication. No one would know she's a prostitute from Cythera -- part of the eclectic assortment of men and women, humans and aliens, who gravitated to you and Illaria on your adventures. She joined you for her own ends, knowing that you were willing to pay a high price for her aid. But it didn't take long for the Princess' radiance to win her over. Now you're entrusting her with this most delicate of tasks...

Her eyes meet yours. She blinks, holding her lids shut for a just long enough to serve as a signal. She understands. You hope she can direct the others and reel it back in.

This is the aspect of the plan which thwarted your efforts at perfect planning.

Next comes righteous anger.

Your speech shifts, like a wandering child who's passed through tragic beauty and now finds herself in darker places. You speak of crimes, atrocities, of murder and conquest. You speak of alien menaces and those who would betray humanity for dreams of ideological supremacy -- who would yearn to see millennia of human culture scoured away, leaving only cold functionality in its wake.

And once again the psychics work their magic.

Aphrodite, the lady from Cythera, harlot and heroine, is the nexus. Her mind, her seductive, ensnaring, remarkable mind, guides theirs on the shadowy paths of manipulation. Like the Hellenic goddess whose name she bears out of either vanity or simple confidence in her powers, few can resist her.

It's no easy task. It wouldn't do to flood the chamber with the force of psionic compulsion, to reveal to even the dullest-witted that something underhanded is taking place. No... It's akin to complex surgery, intricate engineering. Aphrodite and the others have to exert their influence in small and subtle ways, to nudge and shape without overplaying their hands. They must make the audience respond to your speech, succumb to its urgings and invocations of emotion, in a way which would seem natural rather than the work of cunning artifice.

Each human mind is different, a unique creation of thought and memory. It was impossible to replicate the ocean of consciousness that rolls and seethes before you, that flows and thunders around the little beacons of psychic power. Aphrodite and the others couldn't anticipate the precise nature of the mental tapestries they now navigate.

And yet it seems to be working.

She's taken your warning to heart. This time the surge of feeling is less pronounced, less excessive. But it's there all the same. Anger. Cold, smoldering anger is growing in their breasts. Yes... You can read their thoughts as surely as if you were psionic yourself. Resentment towards the Centurians, evolving into hatred. Wrath. Vengeance.

Not all will succumb once the words die on your lips, the speech ended, the funeral over. Nor will everyone be able to convince the powers they represent, to thrust them towards the grim specter of interstellar conflict. But the seeds are being sown.

And this is just the beginning.

Parliamentary Politics

"If the leader of the opposition will simply do the honorable thing-"

"Oh, the honorable thing? The honorable thing, Madam Speaker! Lady Hollister asks us to embroil ourselves even further in a war that doesn't concern us, and talks to us about doing the honorable thing!"

The man sits down on the foremost of the long benches and wallows in smugness. Cheers erupt from the men and women surrounding him, jeers from those across the aisle.

As soon as the plush green upholstery meets his buttocks, Lady Hollister springs up from a similar bench on the opposite side of the large table.

"The Centurians are a threat to the whole of human space! They've orchestrated the murder of one of Novocastria's truest friends! The right honorable gentlemen's sympathies towards them are well known in this house, but there must be a limit to even his stupidity and cowardice!"

Again the cheering, this time from the government's benches. Again the jeering, from those clustered around the leader of the opposition -- the members of parliament ensconced in the places reserved for the shadow cabinet and his other closest allies. But the reaction from the opposition's backbenches is far more interesting. The MPs there are subdued, their silence like a vacuum in the otherwise boisterous chamber.

Lady Hollister sits, her elegant body slipping into her seat with such poise that one might think it had risen up to meet her halfway. Edmund Rochester, the leader of His Majesty's opposition, jumps to his dispatch box -- the movement and the wobbling of his jowls bringing to mind a bounding toad.

"Sympathies? I have no sympathies with the Centurian Collective."

Jeers. Cries of outrage from the government's benches and... yes, even from a few audacious members of his own party.

"Madam Speaker, are we to allow such slanders to be repeated?" he continues. "The committee found no evidence that my dealings with the Centurian Council were in any way improper, or that they continued after their withdrawal from the Union of Human Worlds!"

The speaker, a grey-haired woman who reminds you of a bulldog, scowls. She strikes her gavel down with such force that its sound seems to smash its way through the chamber and knock the noise back down its creators' throats.

"The honorable member from West Lothian is quite right," she growls. "The committee returned a verdict of 'not proven', and other members of this house will refrain from repeating those accusations."

Rochester winces slightly at the words 'not proven', the verdict which hovers between 'guilty' and 'not guilty' and bestows neither conviction nor credit upon those who receive it. But he recovers in the next moment.

"Novocastria has already committed thousands of brave men and women," he says. "Against my counsel, His Majesty chose to deploy all the forces which our Maxima Carta places under direct authority of the crown -- including the Crusaders and the newly styled Dragon Knights. And now the Lady Hollister comes to us asking for more, like an orphan begging for a second helping of gruel!"

He sits. Cheers. Jeers. Men and woman wave sheaves of paper in archaic emphasis, brandishing collections of blank sheets long since shunted into obsolescence by the datapads which rest in their pockets or on their laps.

Lady Hollister rises. The cacophony is reversed in direction but not mirrored in strength. Any fool can see where the chamber's feelings lie. That's what you're counting on, what your Novocastrian ally promised you.

"First of all, Madam Speaker, ever since we came to power and undid the atrocious welfare legislation of the previous government, orphans no longer have to beg for gruel. But to the matter at hand... My honorable friend -- at least until he's 'not proven' to be my friend any longer -- is quite right when he says that thousands of our warriors have already been pledged to aid the Sian Empire and defend our interests from the Centurians and their alien allies. But he neglects to mention that by refusing to acquiesce to the deployment of further forces he is placing their lives in jeopardy. Our deployed military must be at full strength!"

She sits. He rises. Cheers. Jeers.

"The voters of West Lothian elected me to carry out my constitutional duties! And the Maxima Carta states quite adamantly that the leader of the opposition has a say in martial matters -- to ensure that full-scale war is only entered into if both government and opposition believed it to be in the interests of our great nation. And I, Madam Speaker, do not believe this is in our interests."

He's not looking at Lady Hollister as he says this. He's looking straight at the camera, his gaze meeting yours through the monitor, meeting that of each Novocastrian and every outsider who deigns to watch the live parliamentary broadcast.

Edmund Rochester sits. Lady Hollister stands. Cheers. Jeers. And cries of what sounds like "Rhubarb! Rhubarb!" that seem quite inexplicable.

"The leader of the opposition has quite a nerve to refer to his constituents," she says. "We know full well that they plan to unseat him at the next general election. In fact, at least one hundred thousand residents of West Lothian have already signed a petition to have him tarred and feathered at the same time. And the petition was only put online five seconds ago!"

She brandishes her datapad.

Her next words are lost in the cacophony of support from her party and derision from her enemy's minions.

You look away from the screen.

"Time?" Talia asks.

"Time," you reply.

You don your helmet. She does the same, as do Ragnar and Telemachus. Were it not for your vast differences in shape and size, the four of you would be unrecognizable from one another -- concealed beneath identical panoplies of grey and crimson armor.

Lu Bu's eyes flash. Little nozzles, angled like miniature arms, slide out from various parts of his metallic body -- as though he were infested with some strange parasite that caused tendrils to sprout from his nonexistent flesh. There's a soft, sustained hissing, and an almost intoxicating odor. Then the tiny appendages withdraw, leaving your robot friend's frame in the exact same colors and patterns as your adopted uniforms.

You survey your companions, nod your approval, and head for the door. A moment later you've left Lady Hollister's parliamentary office behind, and are working your way through the oak-paneled corridors.

Clerks and other civil servants stare as you pass. Heads swivel on all sides. A group of ordinary individuals wearing these uniforms might pass unheeded. But Ragnar looks like a metal-clad gorilla, Telemachus an armored midget, and Lu Bu... Well, he resembles a painted robot. In spite of this, however, or perhaps because of it, no one tries to stop you.

Soon you're at the big double doors.

A man and woman stand on either side of the portal, clad in shining silver armor inscribed with intricate inscriptions both verbal and pictorial. They nod at you.

"Her ladyship said you'd be coming," the man says.

"Give 'em hell, love," the woman adds.

You push the doors open, revealing the long chamber you saw on the monitor. Hundreds of men and women cease their cheering, jeering, and rhubarbing. All eyes follow your path across the floor, towards the large table that separates government frontbenchers from their opposite numbers. There's surprise on most faces. But not on those around Lady Hollister. On theirs you see only anticipation and excitement.

You reach the table a few paces ahead of your companions.

"May we help you, Lady Knight?" the bulldog-like woman asks.

"No, Madam Speaker, but this man can."

Edmund Rochester regards your pointing finger as though it were an arrow aimed at his throat. His anxiety is released as a soft gasp when you pull your helmet off and set it on the table, displaced by anger.

"This is an outrage!" he yells. The leader of the opposition scrambles to his feet, grabs hold of the dispatch box as though it were an altar granting sanctuary. "The leader of the Sian Empire has no right to intrude into this house and interfere with Novocastrian politics!"

"I must beg to differ," Lu Bu says. "Your laws state that people wearing the king's colors are welcome to put their case before this house."

"Quite so, my robot friend!" Lady Hollister says. "Quite so!"

"That refers to real knights!" Rochester says. "It wasn't meant to give carte blanche to invaders who've stolen suits of our armor!"

Ragnar grunts and steps forward. You wave him back, thus prolonging Edmund Rochester's continued existence for the moment.

"Madam Speaker, I can assure you that [Name] came into possession of those uniforms quite lawfully. They were gifts from our chivalry made to celebrate [Gender] courage."

"That may be," the speaker replies, "but I fear that the honorable leader of the opposition is right. Wearing a knight's uniform doesn't make one a knight. The spirit of the law is clear. I must ask you to leave this chamber, madam, or be removed."

"Yes!" Rochester exclaims. "Throw her out! Show these people that they can't bully our legislature like they tried to bully the UHW's courtroom on Earth!"

You look over at Lady Hollister. She doesn't meet your gaze. Her eyes are focused on the little datapad in her hand.

"One moment!" she says. She looks up at you, smiles, then turns to the speaker. "I've received word from His Majesty King Vencelas. [Name] and [Gender] companions were knighted."

"What? That's ridiculous! I demand to know-"

"Silence!" the speaker cries. The crack of her gavel echoes her demand. "Lady Hollister, I'm aware of no such awards being made."

"It happened rather recently, Madam Speaker. In fact, the titles had to be bestowed in absentia, since [Name] and the others are..."

She pauses, as a quiet bleeping comes from the speaker's direction. The bulldog face frowns as she reaches into the pocket of her robes and withdraws a datapad. She inspects the screen, then grins for the barest fraction of a second before stifling the show of merriment and smothering it with a more appropriate expression.

"Ah, a communication from His Majesty," she says. "It appears that the knighthoods were conferred within the last minute or so."

"This is unacceptable! Madam Speaker!" Rochester cries. "King Vencelas is forbidden from interfering in parliamentary matters, yet he sees fit to assist in this abhorrent trespass!"

"If I may be so bold..." Lu Bu says. The speaker gestures for him to continue. "I do believe that by custom your monarchs are supposed to refrain from watching parliamentary broadcasts. Surely you wouldn't accuse your sovereign of violating your traditions? Such an accusation would prove most unpopular with Novocastrian chivalry."

"What? No... But-"

"And if we accept that the king cannot be aware of present events, the timing of the knighthoods he's so generously chosen to confer on us must be a fortuitous coincidence."

"Sir Lu Bu is quite right," Lady Hollister says. "These knighthoods were rightfully earned."

"For what?" Rochester asks.

Lady Hollister glances down at her datapad.

"For disposing of a rampaging mechanical dragon, apparently. Oh... Yes, I do recall an incident of that nature. You were given a rather spiffing robot dragon of your own as a keepsake, weren't you?"

"We were," you reply.

"Very well," the speaker says. "Our new knights may declare their business before the house."

"We've come to answer the West Lothian Question."

There's a smattering of laughter at that phrase, one Lady Hollister insisted that you use. The holo-tabloids, all of which are suitably disdainful of Edmund Rochester, have taken to posing the question: "How long before Rochester stops behaving like a twerp?" That query has come to bear the name of his constituency -- much to the disgruntlement of its residents.

Ragnar cracks his knuckles. The Novocastrian gauntlets he's wearing fracture beneath the strength of his digits. The breaking of the metal sounds like the crack of doom.

"You plan to... to assault me?" Rochester's head darts from side to side. "You can't do that! Committing acts of violence in the house is a capital offense!"

"Actually, that isn't quite how the law is phrased," Lu Bu replies. "It declares that an attack carried out under the eyes of the government is a capital offense."

"Right on the wicket again, Sir Lu Bu!" Lady Hollister says. "Ladies and gentlemen, I think the next act writes itself, doesn't it?"

She turns round, so that her back is to the aisle, to you, and to the opposition benches. There's a mass shuffling as the rest of her party's MPs follow suit. In moments that half of the chamber is looking the other way. Most of Rochester's backbenchers do the same.

The leader of the opposition glares at you. Then his eyes fall on the object which rests at the foot of the table. You both lunge for it. You're faster.

Perhaps even a man like Edmund Rochester possesses a little Novocastrian pluck. Or perhaps he merely does what any rat would when cornered. But he leaps at you, reaching out to wrest the parliamentary mace from your grasp. He's too slow once more.

The mace crashes into the side of his head, sending him sprawling. It's a ceremonial weapon, designed to represent the royal authority conceded to this house. But it serves your purpose well enough.

The rest of the shadow cabinet fares no better. The burly Shadow Minister for Transport tries to grapple with Ragnar. A heave of the mighty Niflung's arms hurls him through the air, turning him into a backbencher. The Shadow Minister for Health takes Talia's boot to the knee, ribs, and jaw in rapid succession. Telemachus is unarmed. You insisted that he leave his chainsaw on the ship. But that doesn't stop him. He drives his helmeted head into the Shadow Minister for Education's groin.

Lu Bu takes a gentler approach, incapacitating his adversaries with artful jujitsu and aikido techniques made unstoppable by his mechanical speed, strength, and precision. You note that a few of your enemies specifically throw themselves at him -- too proud to flee, but unwilling to face your more brutal companions.

When the last of them goes down, you drag Rochester to his feet.

"Say it," you tell him. "Say it, while you still have a tongue to say it with."

"Okay! Okay! I support Lady Hollister's motion!"

This time there are only cheers.

Sporting Hero

"Hey! You can't be here! I'll-"

Your punch ends the sentence and his consciousness.

There are two more guards at the end of the corridor. They run towards you for a few paces. Then their eyes widen. Recognition dawns. They run the other way instead. Smart men.

"Talia..." The word travels through your implant instead of your mouth.

"Me and Tel are in the booth, captain," comes the reply in your ear. "Ready when you are."

"Any trouble?"

"Nothing we couldn't handle. Lu Bu's guarding the door."

The corridor is familiar. It's filled with the stink of oil and sweat, the din of flying sparks and grinding metal. The scents and noises of battlesuits being built and repaired in the workshops -- of fighters preparing to smash armor against armor for fame, money, and glory.

Twisted Steel.

"I kind of miss this place," Ragnar says.

You nod. It seems a lifetime ago that you last trod this passage, back when things were... different. Illaria was a prisoner, you were forced to risk life and limb to free her -- grueling battle after grueling battle. You'd give anything to be back there, to suffer bruised flesh and broken bones instead of this.

But there's no going back. There never is.

So you walk onward, down the corridor, flanked on either side by a hulking warrior who's ready to do violence at your bidding.

"You!" a voice hisses from the left.

A woman wearing a feline battlesuit stands in one of the workshop doorways. The eyes of her helmet seem to flash both recognition and enmity. She darts towards you, a clawed gauntlet rising.

Ragnar doesn't even miss a step as he headbutts her. He just keeps walking, leaving her groaning on the floor.

The towering man on your right bellows something in Japanese. You glance round to read the subtitle projected from his battlesuit.

"You fight well, Niflung," it reads.

"That he does," you say. "That he does."

A door opens on your right, revealing what looks like a robotic werewolf. Lupine eyes flash as feline ones did. Armored legs bend, serpents preparing to spring.

"Yosh!" Raiyama cries. His subtitle renders this as "Ha!".

He thrusts with the open palm of his metal-encased hand. The tsuppari thunders against the werewolf's armored chest. He might as well have been hit by a truck.

His lupine form flies back into the workshop. There's a chorus of shouts and screams as he lands on his support crew.

No one else interferes.

When you're at the big door, engulfed by the roar of the crowd that shouts and cheers beyond the barrier, you speak into your implant.

"We're here. Hit my music."

"You got it, captain."

The first blast of the electrified, synthesized Sian anthem silences the crowd. The second makes them scream with such violent ecstasy that they might number in the millions instead of the thousands. It's the collective cry of memory, of recollection, of anticipation. They know this entrance music. Your career was short, but eventful. Every fan of the sport knows your name.

The doors slide open, magnifying the music and madness into something inconceivable. Bright lights are flashing. People are waving their signs, their arms, their cups of beer, their children.

A tsunami of elation crashes on you from either side. Up above the arena the gigantic screens show your armor in all its glory -- the suit Wilex and the others helped you craft, that saw you through the wars you were forced to fight in the ring. They show Ragnar and Raiyama as well, and you know that some of the cheers are theirs by right. The armored sumo wrestler was a fan-favorite in his own fighting days. As for the Niflung... You can still see his axe going through Vince Vortex's head.

Eager faces stare at you from the edges of the massive expanse of humanity. They want to know why you're here, what you'll do. And you won't disappoint them.

The only two faces which don't share that emotion are the metal visages of the fighters in the ring. They glare at you, screaming words that are lost in the exultation -- flotsam swept away by tides of sound. Their match has been interrupted, their moment of glory stolen. They aren't happy. Screw them.

You unfurl the whip in your hands, stretch its metallic length out above your head. The screaming is at its zenith. More volume is impossible. But the noise shifts ever so slightly, as though it were a living thing -- an evolving beast. This too they recognize. Natasha Cybersmash's weapon. A token of your victory over a former Twisted Steel champion.

The two fighters in the ring are leaning against the ropes, shouting obscenities. Now that you're closer your aural implant can detect and decipher them, pick them out like salmon fished from a rushing river.

Your whip lashes out. One of the pair catches the end square in the face. His mask cracks. He falls backwards. The crowd laughs.

The other moves away, retreating into the middle of the ring. He's only prolonging the inevitable. The three of you leap onto the apron as one, pass between the ropes.

Raiyama yells. "Mine!" his subtitle reads.

You nod, and gesture for the Niflung to stay back as well.

The sumo wrestler charges. The other fighter doesn't manage to get out of the way. Physics takes hold, merciless momentum launching him over the opposite ropes, grievous gravity slamming him onto the floor below. He lands hard. The crowd loves it.

Ragnar jumps over the ropes, descending on him with both boots before storming towards the terrified ring announcer. He snatches at the microphone. She's stupid enough to try and stop him.

He flings her into the air as though she were a rag doll. Fortunately the crowd catches her. Dozens of playful hands surf her away into insignificance.

Raiyama presses a button on his suit. When he starts talking, his Japanese words echo through the arena -- smashing against the audience's cacophony like two sumo wrestlers striving for victory. Once more there are subtitles, but this time they're huge holographic images that project from his body in all directions. No one will miss what the warrior has to say.

He roars your praises, telling the tale of your martial might, your honor, your courage. And from him the words are irresistible, even to the cynical, bloodthirsty crowd. They cheer his pronouncements, echo his sentiments. When he speaks of the Princess they even weep. These people, who cry out for death and dismemberment each night, shed tears over a murdered woman.

When he finishes, bows to each side of the arena in turn, Ragnar tosses you the pilfered microphone. Now it's your turn...

"You all know who I am."

Silence ripples through the crowd like an explosion. They want to hear you, yearn to be part of this moment. Thousands and thousands in this arena, millions -- perhaps billions -- watching the broadcast across human space.

The speech that rushes from your mouth, the adrenaline-fueled torrent of murder and fury, isn't one Master Wu helped you write. The mandarin has many talents, is well versed in the cultural habits of numerous species and galactic powers. But Twisted Steel? The chaotic, bloody, insane world of sports entertainment? That's not his domain.

It's not refined, sophisticated. There's little which a politician would recognize as oratory. Instead it's raw, brutal, powerful. And it works.

The crowd bays for blood once more, but this time it's not the blood of competitors battling in the ring. They're screaming for the deaths of the Centurians. Thousands. Millions. Billions. All wishing destruction upon your enemies. That's power.

"Who's ready for a war?" you yell.

The wave of noise is your answer. And it's the one you wanted.

But it isn't all you wanted...

A face appears on the gigantic screen at the end of the aisle, above the entrance. It's that of a young man, a stranger. Yet the features are familiar. Shane Vortex. Once heir to Twisted Steel, made its owner by Ragnar's axe. A man with untold wealth at his disposal, with contacts across the galaxy -- politicians in his pocket, dangerous killers at his beck and call.

"You hear them, [Name]? You hear the fans? Well, I hear them too! You want a war?"

The crowd roars.

"You want a war?"

Louder. A crescendo of chaos.

"Then you've got it! I'm Shane Vortex, damn it, and I'll see the Centurians burn!"

Holy War

"You need us to go in with you?" Talia asks.

"They might make you do the Trial of the Twelve again," Telemachus says.

"And I wouldn't mind pounding on those tech-trash one more time." Ragnar slams his knuckles into his palm. The heavy thud seems to scream the words 'blunt force trauma'.

Lu Bu remains silent. His attention is fixed on the blonde woman. He seems perturbed by the way she's running her palms across his torso.

"Your spirit is strong," she says. "I think it's the strongest I've ever felt."

There's a moment's pause. But no one is able to think up a suitable response. Not even the object of her attention. Lu Bu simply stares as though trying to fathom her.

"We'll be fine," you say. "We're not here for a fight, and I don't want to make them nervous. What we need can't be beaten out of them."

The Niflung grunts. He seems poised to argue. But he shrugs instead.

"Just call us if things go wrong. I'll come in swinging and shooting."

You nod. Then you move towards the exit ramp. The three allies you've brought along for the mission follow -- though the blonde woman sighs when she has to pull herself away from Lu Bu.

Just like last time, acolytes greet you on the landing pad with bows and pleasantries. They wear the same white robes, adorned with golden equations and circuit diagrams that sprawl across the garments like the musings of deranged genius. It could be your imagination, but these seem more elaborate than before. The man from Diogenes murmurs something incomprehensible but apparently favorable as he regards them.

The path is equally familiar: into the remarkable silver building with its twelve square towers, along corridors adorned with all manner of scientific diagrams and notations. The man and women you've brought with you stare at these in utter fascination. You hope this sentiment proves mutual. Success or failure here might depend on it.

Your brunette ally points towards certain images, which she and the man discuss in hushed but excited voices, like children desperate to share a secret but fearful that it might evaporate if they declare it too loudly. As for the blonde, her inscrutable gaze and gentle touch seem to draw everything in. A soft smile plays at the edges of her mouth. But she says nothing.

It's the same chamber that marks the terminus of your journey, the dark room with a square of glowing floor space where you and your friends battled the Cybertollahs. Another memory of Illaria, an adventure that once seemed such fun but is now heaped onto the mournful, bitter pyre with all the others.

This time the Supreme Cybertollahs, that enigmatic pair, are on the floor instead of observing from their lofty balcony -- the stocky blue-robed form and absurdly thin red-robed one awaiting your arrival side by side.

The acolytes disappear into the darkness, leaving you alone with their bizarre masters.

"We know why you have come."

Ah, yes... The Supreme Cybertollahs' voices. The words sound like they could have come from either of them. Their outlandish bodies are motionless, betraying no hint.

"You are dragging human space to war against the Centurians. For this conflict you desire our technology."

"Yes. But that's not all."

There's an almost imperceptible shifting of their frames. The vaguest motion to indicate their surprise, caught only because you're watchful for it. You let their disquiet hang in the air for a long moment before you elaborate.

"I want you to issue a fatwa condemning the Centurians as heretics, and urging your followers to strive against them."

No movement. No words. Shocked into silence, or perhaps wishing to hear you out. Their inhuman faces defy scrutiny.

"Other technotheists have already made that claim," you continue. "They accuse the Collective of heresy for meddling with alien technology they don't truly understand. And they know that the Centurians would destroy tech-worship if they could, like they've done with every other religion in their territory. Some of your adherents have even found their way into our forces because of this."

"The schism is not your concern." The voice comes from the red Cybertollah this time. His body twitches.

You look from one to the other.

"You're divided, aren't you? Conflicted."

"Our theological contemplations cannot be shared with outsiders," the blue one replies. But his broad shoulders are squared, his hands clenched. He wishes to do violence, but not to you...

There's a small cough from the side. The man from Diogenes.

"Excuse me..." he says. "Perhaps I can save you both some time. You will eventually decide to issue this fatwa."

Even you stare at him in surprise. This wasn't part of your plan.

"Who are you?" the blue Cybertollah asks. Their voices remain parted now, sundered.

"This is Professor Mycroft," you reply.

Twin gasps from behind inhuman faces.

"We have asked you to preach your technology on Occulus many times," the blue one says.

"But our requests went unanswered," the red one adds. "We were told that you no longer left your laboratory."

"That was the case, before [Name] piqued my interest."

"What did you mean, when you said we would issue the fatwa?"

"A simple calculation. Well, simple by my standards. Perhaps not by anyone else's. I've studied your Cybertollan Surahs quite extensively and read each one of your fatwas. From this I was able to determine your philosophical and theological methods of thought, and through a series of equations arrived at a certain conclusion."

The Supreme Cybertollahs turn to each other. Then they turn back to Mycroft.

"Perhaps I should show you..."

One of the professor's mechanical servitor arms reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, withdraws a datapad, and passes it into his right hand. He steps forward and offers it out to the red Cybertollah.

The thin red-robed being takes it from him. He and his blue-robed counterpart press themselves close together as both stare at the object's screen.

A full minute passes before they look up from the datapad.

"Who are these others?" the blue one asks. He turns his hideous skull-like visage to the two women behind you.

Good... He's come to realize that you have things of interest to the Cybertollahs. His emotions are invisible, but somehow you sense his eagerness.

The brunette moves forward.

"Doctor Katrina Malkov," she says. "Perhaps you heard of the Genesis incident? The regenerating warship which Terminus was going to sell to the Centurians? It was my research that helped destroy it."

"She's an expert on nanotechnology," you say.

"No, I'm the expert on nanobot technology. And quite a few other areas of scientific endeavor."

The blonde comes forward as well. But she doesn't speak. Instead she walks up to the red Cybertollah and presses her hands against his torso. He flinches, though this doesn't stop her from running her palms along his strange body.

"Two spirits... One machine, one human. Like a cyborg but more than a cyborg." She continues her examination, doesn't even look up as she murmurs: "My name is Anita."

"Anita's work on robotics is..." you begin.

"It's been called lunacy," she says. The words are soft, almost a whisper -- as though their pronouncement is inconsequential. "But it's not."

"Just three of the scientific minds that have been drawn to our cause. People whose knowledge of technology would be of... significance... to you."

You signal to Katrina. Like Mycroft before her, she holds out a datapad. The blue Supreme Cybertollah accepts it with a slow and tender grasp, as though it were a fragile artifact of incalculable worth.

"A collection of some of our research," the doctor says.

The two robed hierophants are plunged into a state of silent scrutiny once more. Their quietness, their intentness, is enough. You can read their thoughts, unravel their contemplations. To them the eclectic research of these three geniuses isn't merely a means of creating weapons or other valuable inventions. Each notion contained within that datapad is a new line of theological ponderance, pregnant with philosophical implications and divine epiphanies.

It seems like several minutes before they look up from the datapad.

"There is one thing we must know," the red one says. The empty sockets of his visage meet your eyes, and somehow the blackness within them seems focused, intent.

"Yes?"

"The blow you struck to destroy the Emperor... What technology did you employ?"

Your hand rises automatically, and your gaze fastens itself upon it. Your fingers clench, open, clench, and open. Several seconds drift away into oblivion. Then you meet his eyeless stare once more.

"Blood."

Several more seconds of silence. Of thought. Of emptiness.

"Very well." The Supreme Cybertollahs speak as one. "We will issue our fatwa. The Centurians are heretics. They must be purged."

Broken People

The gorgeous door, its surface rendered priceless through both the precious metals and gems it bears and the fabulous artistic skill with which they've been wrought, slides into the wall. Beauty disappears, leaving only a hole.

In the antechamber beyond, the cyber dragons stir in their alcoves. Each of the colorful watchdogs raises a reptilian head from its coils, favors you with a sleepy blink, and settles down again. Their lethargy sends a wave of melancholy through you. It's as if they know... Guardians of an empty, unused tomb, their vigilance perfunctory and meaningless.

You pass them by, watch another door disappear into obscurity. Then you're in her chambers.

Everything is just as she left it. The maids have cleaned and polished, done the duties which the embassy's denizens so take for granted. But none have dared put blasphemous hands to her arrangements, had the audacity to violate this special place by undoing what she did. The splendid treasures still sit in sadness, rejected by Illaria, shunted against walls and into corners. Projections of systems and ships, weapons and warriors, still rule this place in martial pride. She chose them, scorned art and beauty in favor of their warlike worth.

You walk between the displays, your fingers trailing through the holographic images and leaving soft ripples in their wake.

There's still so much to do, so many preparations to make. But somehow you had to be here, at least for a time. It's an indulgence, unworthy of the duties thrust upon you -- that she thrust upon you. You should have resisted. Yet here you are...

At the far end of the chamber stand two doors, barriers you've never traversed. You approach the one on the right. It whispers open, revealing her bedroom. More doors lead off to small chambers, to the wardrobe and dressing room in which she girded herself for the ordeals she faced each day, to the chamber in which she bathed the cares of the world from her body if not her mind.

You ignore these portals. Instead you move towards the bed. It's an archaic work of art -- a slender pillar carved into the shape of a sinuous dragon rises up from each corner, supporting the soft draped mantle of a canopy above.

You lower your face towards one of the pillows. It still bears her scent. You close your eyes, draw in the sweetness of her perfume. Images of the imperial gardens flow across your mind, of colorful cherry blossom trees rustling in a gentle breeze, swaying in the sunlight. Then they vanish, replaced by redness.

Your eyes flash open. You shouldn't have come here.

You move away, back into the room beyond with its charts of war and death. Need to get back to that, do what must be done...

The sound freezes you in place. A soft, almost inaudible susurration. A voice.

You turn around, breath catching in your throat. Your heart thuds.

It's coming from behind the other door, the portal to the left of the glorious jungle scene and its stalking tigers.

Wonder slips away like an ephemeral dream. Confusion shrouds your mind instead. Now that you're nearer, you recognize it as a man's voice.

The lavish door slides away, another slab of beauty thrown into the abyss. Its retreat unveils a small study, its walls lined with the colorful, austere spines of archaic tomes. At the far end of the chamber, upon a table...

"You!"

The word shoots from your tongue and his at the same moment.

There's a jar on the table, adorned with glowing lights, filled with fluid not unlike that which encases bodies in a healing tank. Suspended in this liquid, staring at you in surprise that shifts to wrath, is a severed head -- a visage of damaged flesh and cybernetic augmentation. Commander Rautha. Or what's left of him.

Next to the jar and its ridiculous, wrecked occupant is a small holographic projection disc. The image of a face hovers above it, a beautiful, ethereal face. Her face.

"Get out!" he yells.

A light on the base of the jar flashes in time with his words, transmitting them from one of his innumerable implants and preventing them from being smothered by the liquid. A device you had made to mock him, so you could amuse yourselves by hearing your grisly trophy rant and rave.

You feel the anger twisting your features, hardening your mouth, narrowing your eyes.

Your pistol tears free of its holster. You level it at the jar. He's lived long enough.

Rautha snorts.

"Go on! You think I care? I'm a head in a goddamn jar! Shoot me and put me out of my misery!"

The weapon lowers. He's right. You left him like this so he could suffer. Why set him free now?

But you're not going to let him revel in the Centurians' victory...

You stride across the chamber and snatch the hologram projector from the table. The press of a button and she's gone, evaporated.

"No! You bitch!" Rautha screams. "You whore! Put that back! Put it back!"

His forehead bangs against the side of the jar with a muffled thud.

You walk away.

"Please..."

The pleading, whining voice, catches you at the door. When you look around, the anger is gone from his face. There's only misery.

And something occurs to you.

"How did you get here? We left you in one of the storerooms."

"She brought me."

The words make no sense. Ragnar might have taken Rautha as a personal souvenir, so he could laugh at his misfortune on a daily basis. But not her. The Princess would never have done that. And yet you know he's telling the truth. No one else would have put him here, sullied her private quarters with this ruined remnant of an enemy.

You glance around the room. There's a writing desk against one of the other walls, an empty space where its chair should be. That removed article stands near Rautha's table. Its carved feet have sunk deep into the carpet. The chair has been there for some time, and seen its fair share of use.

"She knew I was lonely."

"You tried to kill her."

"And you stopped me." His eyes flash. "Why couldn't you have stopped him as well?"

The anger slips away again, a wild beast collapsing in its death throes.

"One of the maids told me what happened. What Dule did."

His brow thuds against the jar again -- a pathetic, impotent little headbutt.

You move across the room, drop into the chair before you understand what you're doing.

"I should have saved her. I failed. But I won't fail again. Dule and the rest of your Centurian friends are going to die."

"Good."

He stares into your eyes as though begging you to challenge him, to deny his sincerity. But you can't. You look at his grim, ruined face, and you know that he means it.

"She let me contact Alpha Centauri," he says. "Did you know that?"

You shake your head.

"Said I could let them know I'd been captured. You know what my superiors said when I spoke to them? They told me to go to hell. Said I'd done nothing but screw up."

"They had a point."

Rautha grunts.

"They told the Princess she should just throw me out of the nearest airlock." Rautha's eyes narrow into slits, like the edge of a knife. "Then she let me call my wife."

"You have a wife?"

"I wasn't always a head in a jar, remember?" Another muffled headbutt. This time he remains there, his forehead pressed against the glass. "She just laughed. Said she'd been cheating on me ever since I was maimed in the explosion."

He tilts back again, his eyes meeting yours with murderous intensity.

"The bitch left me for a woman! Told me that her new whore was more of a man than me. And not just any woman... My replacement. The commander they put in charge of the Child of Heaven."

He sighs.

"Everyone turned their backs on me. But the Princess... my enemy... she was good to me. She's the only one who was good to me. And Dule took her from me. From us."

You wince, pained and outraged to hear this wretch speak of Illaria as his, as someone he had a claim to. But your hollow soul can't muster up any anger to throw at him.

"You're going to attack Alpha Centauri?"

"I am."

"Then I'll tell you everything I know about its defenses." A faint sneer, a trace of his old arrogance, flickers across his mouth. "You can have one of your psychics question me if you want, to prove that I'm telling the truth."

"Maybe. For now, tell me what you know."

And he does. For long, long minutes he expounds on everything he knows about the Centurian Collective's military arrangements. The information might be out of date. It could be irrelevant. Yet it may prove useful all the same.

You stand up, and put the holographic projector back where you found it. Next to his jar. A click of the button, and she's there again -- in all her radiance, all her beauty. If only it worked like that...

He calls out when you're in the doorway.

"Wait... There's something else. A favor."

"I'm listening."

An Offer You Can't Refuse

The woman pads across the dark room. Her nightgown shimmers in the moonlight that infiltrates between the slats of the shutters. It strokes her body's curves like a silver lover, caresses the locks of hair so dark they almost meld into the shadows around them.

She passes the desk, bare footsteps soft on the thick, plush carpet. She stops at the glass cabinet, below a portrait of an elderly man in a pinstripe suit.

Two fingers touch her lips. Then she presses them against the man's painted forehead, transferring the kiss with the air of an instinctive ritual.

There are bottles on top of the cabinet, perhaps separated from those within by the frequency of their use. Yes... She likes these ones to be at hand, not shut away with the others.

Slender fingers close around a crystal tumbler. It's large and heavy, not made for a woman's hand. Its facets glisten in the moonlight as she pulls it towards herself, like a phantom's treasure.

A corked stopper leaves a bottle's mouth with the soft pop of freedom. An amber waterfall cascades into the tumbler, forming a rich lake two fingers deep. She lifts a second bottle, this one filled with a deeper hue, and tilts it over her glass.

"A godfather? How appropriate."

The woman stiffens. Liquid splashes against the rim of the glass, forms a little pool on the cabinet's surface. But in a second she's recovered her poise, regained her composure. She finishes pouring the brown liqueur.

"Would you like one?" she asks.

"Sure. No poison, please. It won't be necessary."

A faint smile teases her mouth.

"I'll be the judge of that."

But she reaches for the unpoisoned bottle of scotch. You know, because you checked each of them earlier. She pours a generous measure into a fresh tumbler.

"My guards?"

"They'll live. Fire the fat one. He tried to sell you out to escape a beating."

"He'll be sleeping with the fishes tomorrow."

"Reassigning him to your Piscarian brothel?"

"Funny."

She adds an equal measure of similarly non-lethal amaretto to the second glass.

"How did you get past the other security measures?"

"A couple of people who used to work for you fight for me now. They told me a thing or two."

She sighs.

"You can't trust anyone these days."

"They only helped when I promised them I wasn't going to hurt you."

"That's something, I suppose."

She walks to the desk, one of the tumblers in each hand, and sets both drinks down on the dark wood. She slips into the chair behind it, gestures for you to take the seat in front.

Then she sighs again. You smile. You've dealt with the Contella Consortium before. They like to strap things under the desk...

"Your plasma shotgun's over here. This way we can avoid unpleasant accidents."

You emerge from the shadows, accepting the moonlight's caress.

"Ah... I was expecting to hear from you. But at a more appropriate hour."

She glances at the large bag that sways beneath your left hand.

"I wanted our meeting to be nice and private. Just you and me."

You sit down opposite her, setting the bag on the floor. There's a faint clink.

She gestures at the drink nearer you, lifts the other to her lips. You pick it up and do the same.

First the sweetness. Then the hard fieriness concealed within its cloying depths.

"You're here to ask for the Consortium's help in your war."

"I'm here to buy it."

The datapad slides across the table. She stops it with the edge of her tumbler.

Her features are almost inscrutable as she reads it. You don't become the head of the Contella Consortium by revealing your hand in business dealings. But the movement of her eyes, the pauses as they scour the information, is telling.

"Ambitious. Taking back Sian space is one thing, but this..."

"The Centurians are spread too thin. If we devastate the fleets and armies they have in our territory, the rest won't be difficult."

"The victory might not be, but the occupation?" She takes a long swig of her godfather. "These are lucrative planets you've promised us."

"Some of the most valuable worlds in Collective space."

"And how much blood will it cost us to conquer them, to suppress their entire populations?"

"You won't have to worry about that. By then they'll be begging you to occupy them. It'll be better than dealing with me."

She holds your gaze for a long moment.

"Deal."

"I want to buy something else as well."

You pick the bag up and push it over to her across the desk. She pulls it open.

"Hard credits?"

She smirks. Hard credits... No electronic trail. Not for this transaction...

You tell her what you want. Her eyes widen.

"You're going to-"

"What I'm going to do with them is none of your concern. Will you give me what I need?"

"Yes."

"It was nice doing business with you."

You stand up, knock back the rest of your godfather, and set the empty tumbler down. Then you slip away from the moonlight, back into the cold, black comfort of the shadows.

"She was a good woman."

"The best," you reply over your shoulder.

"What would she say? About what you're planning?"

You leave the question hanging in the moonlight as you step into the corridor.

Sigurd Spinebreaker

There's no mistaking a luxury cruiser.

All manner of vessels thread the void, from small single-manned craft to immense warships that are more like military bases or mobile settlements than vehicles. Their metal bodies are shaped in a myriad different ways, displaying countless designs which the minds of man and alien conceived whilst dreaming of the mastery of space.

But luxury cruisers, those fabulous monuments to power and wealth, stand apart from the others -- like chryselephantine colossi towering over statues of baser stone and inferior artistry, outshining them in beauty and resplendence. Each is a sumptuous treasure, bespeaking the designer's genius and the owner's taste. All are unique, celestial snowflakes. No one who could afford such a vessel would deign to possess a mere replica of another, like a common merchant or mercenary whose ship might have many thousands of doppelgangers scattered across the enormity of space.

Some whisper their origins, telling of the individual or culture to whom they belong in the elegance of their construction or the magnificence of their adornments. Others bellow it, as though it were a challenge -- demanding that the void and its denizens recognize the power behind it, defying those who might take umbrage at their audacity. Odin's Eye is one of the latter.

The gargantuan vessel resembles a longship, a mastless imitation of those which ferried Earth's Vikings on their bloody campaigns of looting and pillaging. Its hull is the color of wood, painted and fashioned to simulate that archaic material -- as though it had been made from gigantic planks instead of great expanses of metal. Relief sculptures flow across that façade, showing heroes and battles, myths and monsters. In one place men and women in mail hauberks clash with a tentacled sea monster, hacking its hideous body with swords and axes. In another valkyries fly above a battlefield atop winged horses, their mouths open in exhortations to those who fight below.

A huge dome stretches across the top of the entire ship, from prow to stern, rising up from the faux wooden sides and encasing its surface in a canopy so transparent as to be almost invisible. Beneath this aegis is an incredible vista, an expanse of verdant forests and rolling plains, shining lakes and grey mountains. A landscape that might have come from medieval Scandinavia.

The people who inhabit this incredulous realm are too distant to see with the naked eye. But zoomed-in views appear on some of the monitors, little windows into this Niflung pleasure world. On one a deer emerges from the edge of a forest, bounding onto the grass beyond. A man dressed in a curious mélange of mail and more modern armored plates bursts from the foliage a second later, screaming a war cry which your aural implant interprets as both bloodcurdling and profane. He pivots, raises a muscular arm, and casts a spear after the fleeing beast. When it flies wide, missing the deer by a wide margin, he roars again. Then he reaches behind his back, pulls out a sub-machinegun, and unleashes a hail of bullets from its flaming muzzle. The deer convulses as the gunfire rips through its hide. Its bloody carcass tumbles across the grass before rolling to a stop.

On another monitor you see a Norse feasting hall nestled upon a hilltop, its windows filled with a flickering glow that bespeaks the illumination of flame -- real or simulated. Men and women are pouring out of the building, tankards and jugs in their hands, cheering on a fistfight between two burly Niflung warriors who judging by the grins on their faces are laying into one another out of amusement rather than enmity.

The communications console bleeps, drawing you away from the archaic pastimes and revelry.

"I know you're not space pirates," a woman's voice says. "No pirate would be stupid enough to attack a Niflung warlord's personal cruiser."

"We're here to see Sigurd Spinebreaker," you reply.

"He doesn't-"

You touch the console. A holographic screen appears across the flight cabin's front window, concealing the awe-inspiring vessel. It shows a small control room, its walls carved with similar illustrations to those on the ship's hull. Not even that little functional chamber has been spared from the splashings of opulence.

The woman who dominates the image might have been modeled after the valkyries on the wall behind, or they after her. Blonde hair falls in waves down either side of her face, wild and untamed. Her breasts struggle against a chain armor bikini top which would likely offer no more protection in battle than it leaves to the imagination.

But the expression on her face is quite unlike the bellicose visages of the sculpted warrior-women. Her eyes are wide, and her mouth forms a pretty circle of blood red surprise.

"You know who I am?"

She nods.

"Good. Tell Spinebreaker to expect me."

The warlord's eyes -- one of flesh, the other a burning red replacement -- fall on each of your companions in turn. Telemachus, Talia, and Lu Bu occupy their gaze for only an instant before being dismissed. They linger for longer on Ragnar, on the hulking frame that's so similar to Sigurd's own.

He leans forward in his throne, a great mass of carved sea serpent bones -- its sides studded with the beast's long, wicked teeth so it resembles a monstrous maw. From that lofty height, raised above the floor on a series of stone slabs laid atop one another to create deep stairs on three sides, the warlord seems like a huge predator preparing to pounce on his quarry below.

"Do I know you?" he asks.

"I think my mother killed your father," Ragnar replies.

"Ha! A good woman, that one. You have her arms."

Then Sigurd Spinebreaker's eyes end their travels. They come to rest on you. And they're not the only ones.

At least four dozen Niflung warriors stand on each side of the open space ceded to you and your companions, filling the audience chamber with their barbaric presence. There are bare-chested men, who display slabs of muscle bestowed by nature, exertion, or science. Others wear the same garb as their leader, clad in what their people call 'space mail' -- armor created to emulate the chain shirts worn by Earth's medieval Norsemen in appearance, though constructed of far more advanced materials. As for the women... Some are shapely valkyries, like the one you saw on the monitor -- many in equally immodest dress, a few attired in more practical fashion. Others are as powerfully built as the males around them, their bodies laden with violent muscle.

All of them are staring at you.

On Wilex's cruiser, you sensed the fear. Most of the crew masked it as best they could. They only stared when they thought you weren't looking, only slinked away if they believed you wouldn't notice. You frightened them. For they knew that the mortal blow you struck the Emperor wasn't the result of technology, some hidden weapon or device. It wasn't science which punched a hole in his chest, sent his smashed organs gushing out. It was something far more inscrutable, beyond the means of any psionic martial artist whose abilities are known to the world. They'd never seen its like before, until they saw what you and he were capable of.

But these Niflungs...

They're men and women of war. Killing and bloodshed are as dear to them as lovers. And for all their savage appearances and ways of life, they understand the technology of violence. If they don't know for certain, they must at least suspect that there was no trickery behind that murderous punch. And yet they show no fear, no nervousness. Instead you see only curiosity, admiration, and respect.

"For me?" the warlord asks.

He raises a big, heavy hand and points at the crates which float beside you -- hovering above the sedate glowing cushion of light emitted from their antigravity systems.

"Exotic weapons," you say. "Things my friends and I came across on our travels."

He grins.

Sigurd Spinebreaker is a wealthy man, with vast armies at his command. These gifts are of little value to him. If he desired such things, he would simply have to nod to his warriors and they would be brought to him. But you perceive no insincerity in his grin. Ragnar was right... He's pleased at your adherence to this Niflung custom, proud to have the leader of the Sian Empire offer him tribute.

"Worthy gifts. But you didn't come all this way just to bring me them."

"No. I came to invite you to a war."

"Bjorn Bjorsson came to me, and to all the other warlords. You have powerful friends."

"Yes."

"The others have already agreed to wage war on the Centurians. But I refused, much as I would love to drive my axe through Dule's body. Do you know why?"

His warriors are tensing, their powerful frames swelling with anticipation. Of course... His words are for their benefit, not yours. He's a ruler playing to his subjects, letting them feel the full magnitude of this moment. More games...

"Bjorsson said you needed to be sure I was worthy to follow in battle."

"You understand what that means?"

"It means we're going to fight."

The Niflungs cheer. There's a familiar roar from your right, Ragnar's own bellicose cry joining the cacophony.

Sigurd Spinebreaker stands. He reaches his big hands to his mail shirt and grabs at the metal over his pectorals. Then he bellows, and pulls. Chain links part, the sound of their snapping lost amid the din. Ruined steel circles fly from him, scatter down the stone steps. Talia reaches out and snatches one from the air before it can hit Telemachus in the face.

The warlord's strength is irresistible. The tear lengthens, ripping down the armor's middle -- breaking through link after link -- revealing massive muscles, inscribed with the scars of a lifetime's battles. He yanks the wrecked garment from his torso and hurls it to the floor.

"To the fighting pit!" he yells.

The cheering intensifies.

Sigurd strides down the stone steps until his boots touch the floor. Even now he still looms above you. His seven foot tall frame, encased in Heraclean muscle, dwarfs even Ragnar's.

He grins down at you, then gestures to the wall on your right. A large doorway has swung open, creating a gap in the carved battles and monster-slaying scenes. His warriors are already pouring through it.

The two of you walk side by side, your companions falling in line behind you, silent amid the tumultuous Niflungs.

Through the doorway is a room of similar size to the audience chamber, much of its floor space devoured by a sunken pit. Once more the art and lavishness have penetrated into a functional little space -- the pit's walls are inscribed with the same imagery of Nordic might and heroism. You suppose that they're rather more appropriate here than in a communications room, at least.

The Niflung warriors are moving around the edges of the pit, securing good positions to watch what's soon to happen down below.

An elevator disc hovers nearby, waiting to lower fighters into that place of battle. But Sigurd ignores it, and jumps down instead -- plunging a dozen feet and landing in the middle of his arena.

Ragnar's voice sounds in your aural implant.

"See the way his knees bent when he hit the ground? My skeleton would've taken care of the impact without buckling like that."

You nod. That hadn't escaped you either. Spinebreaker's muscles might have been enlarged and strengthened by surgery or chemical enhancements, but he's probably not as packed full of cybernetics as your omnicidal companion.

"Good luck, captain," Talia whispers.

You jump down into the pit.

A wrestler's stance. His hands are open, ready to catch and grab, twist and lock. The floor under your boots is hard, unforgiving. A bad throw or slam might break your skull.

He has the reach advantage. Strength too. Those muscles... Thick like armor. A normal blow won't stop him. He'll absorb it, then you'll be in grappling range. His range.

Kasan...

The voice hisses at the back of your brain. Yes... You could stop him. One blow. That's all it would take.

Kasan...

No! Stupid. Have to drown that voice, submerge it. Now isn't the time for killing. Soon, but not now.

Sigurd steps towards you, broad chest and thick arms bulging with suppressed ferocity. He's too experienced, too cunning to rush in like a wild beast. No use retreating, trying to keep your distance. It would only delay the inevitable, and make you lose face before the Niflungs.

Need to pick a weak spot...

The warlord advances, the weight on the balls of his feet. His gaze locks with yours, both eyes glaring. The red one is like fire, the flesh one like rage. Intimidation. It's wasted on you. You've seen worse. So much worse...

You hold your ground, willing your body into stillness -- quieting any twitches, any unconscious movements that might betray your intentions.

One more step. Then he's in range.

You lunge, throwing your entire weight forward with a burst of violence from your legs, snapping your right fist out in a straight, darting punch. It's a potent strike. If it hit him in the face it would do damage. But it might not stop him. Not a man like Sigurd. And then he'd clinch with you...

So you don't aim for his face.

Your vertical fist hits the extended digits of his right hand. The index and middle fingers snap backwards, bent then broken by the power of your blow. You and Ragnar were right... His skeleton hasn't been reinforced. And he can't grapple with broken fingers...

That though crosses your mind. Then it's smashed out again. Your head snaps to the side, light and darkness exploding in your vision. There's a faint crunch. A vague, fleeting thread of rationality tells you that it's your cheekbone breaking.

Disorientation lasts for only a second, leaving throbbing pain and rapid understanding in its wake.

His left elbow... Wasn't distracted by the pain in his fingers. Not even for an instant. That's bad...

A big knee drives at your abdomen, ready to continue the assault, further the demolition, break the rest of you like he's broken your face.

But you're not easily distracted either. Your mind gives you the move, plans out the next attack, before you're even fully aware of it.

You drop down, evading the blow, sliding into a Dragon's Tail takedown. Your legs move like scissors. One boot kicks at the knee of his stationary leg. The other sweeps at its ankle. His right leg is still in the air, locked into the thwarted strike. So he falls. Even his massive, muscular body isn't immune to the laws of physics and biology.

Your legs don't retract. Instead they start to snake around the abused limb even before Sigurd hits the floor. By the time he crashes down, to the warlike screams of the Niflungs, his leg's held fast between yours. You hook the heel of his combat boot with your arms.

Pain won't stop him. You've proven that already. No point in going for a submission. Instead you wrench his hooked heel, torqueing his captured leg's ankle and knee. The powerful limb thrashes, trying to twist to match the turning force put on his foot, to move with it instead of resisting. But it can't move -- not with your legs trapping it.

The ligaments in his knee tear. The bones break. No, definitely not reinforced...

Most men would scream in agony, cry out in surrender. Sigurd Spinebreaker merely grunts. Then he kicks out with his other leg.

The boot crashes into your face. You feel its tread marking your flesh, thudding so hard against your skull that you imagine the print denting itself into the bone beneath.

Your hands come up in time to block the second kick. Then the warlord pounces, somehow ignoring his broken leg, throwing his body forward onto yours in an avalanche of bone and muscle.

He's on top of you, his eyes and mouth screaming murder, his elbows raining down on you to make it so. Thunderous blows batter your guarding arms, until it feels like your bones must be fractured in a dozen places. Then come punches, picking their way between your arms, smashing your face, the sides of your head, knocking your skull and your consciousness around the galaxy.

Gravity, body mechanics... On his side, lending might to each downwards punch. You're on your back. From here you can't...

Kasan...

That would do it. The Imperial Fist. Even from here, it could splinter his ribs...

Kasan...

Explode his heart...

Kasan...

No!

You thrash from side to side, trying to weave between the punches. Sigurd doesn't stop flailing. He's berserk, frenzied, too committed to the flurry to stop swinging. Some of his punches still hit home, thudding your brain against the inside of your skull, each one creating a little explosion of his victory in your vision. But others miss. His fists blunder against the hard floor. Broken fingers fracture further under the abuse. His undamaged hand suffers as well. The flailing slows. The flurry starts to die like a violent storm that's reached the end of its power.

Then you retaliate.

Your spearhand hits him in the middle of his neck, the little portion of unprotected throat between the thick muscles and tendons. He splutters at the destruction of his breath.

Your legs snap inwards and upwards, grabbing at his head. Right thigh against the side of his neck, the inside of your calf pulling down against the top of his spine. The other leg comes up to meet it, wrapping itself around your right foot -- securing the triangle, pinning Sigurd's own arm on the other side of his neck.

The warlord's strong, but his brain still needs blood. His lungs still crave air. You squeeze for all you're worth, choking and strangling with your legs and his trapped arm.

His face is already going red, like strange war paint next to his golden hair and beard.

You feel his weight shifting. He's moving his unbroken leg, pressing the sole of his boot against the floor. He can't be...

But he is. He pushes himself upwards -- lifting you into the air -- standing on his one good leg.

You keep your legs locked, not willing to surrender your hold.

He's at his full height, supporting both your bodyweights with a single leg, pulling you high above the hard floor -- yanking at you with his free hand until you're upright, your body raised above his.

Your elbow smashes against his temple. And again. And again.

Then comes the fall. You can't tell whether it's a deliberate slam, the completion of his intended powerbomb, or whether it's because his body has given way. All you know is that you're falling. And that it's going to hurt.

You tuck your head forward, brace your arms to perform a breakfall.

The floor hits your back like a speeding spaceship. It feels as if your organs are splattering against your ribcage. Internal injuries. Serious ones, maybe.

But you've saved your skull. You're still conscious. That means...

You sit up, wincing as your ruptured innards seem to shift around inside, and look into Sigurd's purple face. His red, glaring eye meets your gaze. You brace yourself, ready to defend against another murderous clubbing blow. But his other eye, his natural orb, is hidden behind closed lids.

His limbs are powerless, drained of their prodigious might along with the warlord's consciousness.

You untangle your legs, each motion sending a fresh wave of torment through your torso, and release the triangle choke. Sigurd slumps to the floor, his huge frame flopping onto his back as you pull away.

A lithe form touches down beside you. A brutish one lands with a weightier thud.

"You okay, [Name]?" Talia asks.

You murmur something. More blood than voice spits from your mouth.

"Good fight!" Ragnar says. Then he looks up at the crowd and yells: "Medic!"

The elevator disc descends, lowering two of the voluptuous valkyries into the pit. One has a medical gauntlet on her right hand -- its little mechanical limbs and scanners twitching in the air as though trying to sniff out the person in need of attention. She crouches by your side and puts it to work.

The other woman is holding a large pitcher. She skips over to Sigurd's supine form and upends it. Brown liquid gushes over him, splashing across his face, soaking into his hair and beard. From the potent smell which assails your nostrils, it's nearly pure alcohol.

The warlord splutters. Then he growls. Then he laughs.

Two burly warriors jump down into the pit and run to his side. Between their powerful limbs the injured warlord struggles to his feet -- resting his weight on his unbroken leg.

You rise as well, ignoring the valkyrie's protests. Talia takes your arm to steady you. Ragnar braces his hand on your back when you totter.

Sigurd grins at you. He raises his fist, and the Niflungs fall silent.

"As soon as my doctors fix my bones, I'll gather my forces. It'll be an honor to fight under your command." He looks up at the warriors surrounding the pit. "Get ready for battle!"

The war cries of a hundred Niflungs fill the universe with their violence.

|-|

Child of Hell=
Child of Hell

"My daughter must have a vessel worthy of her, a craft fit to bear the jewel of our empire as she serves our subjects across the galaxy. Our allies shall look upon it and be proud to number us among their friends. As for those who wish us ill, they will tremble as they perceive the might and magnificence of their foes." -- The Emperor

They're the best. That's why you picked them.

Men and women in green jumpsuits mill around the hangar, between metal birds of war that gleam with the promise of battles to come. Some of them wore that color, the uniform of the empire's elite squadrons, before the war. They were outside Sian space when the Centurians attacked, or else were ordered to withdraw in the face of the harsh, soul-shattering understanding that the empire's systems were lost and its defeat inevitable.

In their eyes are anger, guilt, and shame. The emotions of warriors who lived while their comrades died, who retreated with the screams of the dying ringing in their ears and the explosions of spacecraft seared into their vision. You doubt a single one of them relishes their continued existence, is grateful that they escaped the Centurian conquest with their lives and liberty intact for any reason but one: it's allowed them to be here on this day, ready to fight and avenge. They're kindred spirits, your brothers and sisters in pain if not in blood.

Others wear the uniform for the first time. You chose them for the honor, reviewing each service record in turn until you found what you were looking for -- the ones who deserved to be elevated, to take part in this mission which any true son or daughter of the Sian Empire would covet. There's pride in their eyes, marred by nervousness, exhilaration, and determination. Some will die in those jade jumpsuits.

Dispersed throughout the green-garbed crowd are individuals in different costumes, an assortment of military and civilian dress that seems incongruous amid the harmonious jade of their counterparts. Most are Sian pilots who declined the new uniforms, and asked to wear those of their old units instead. Some are sole survivors, the orphans of squadrons whose blood and wreckage were scattered across the void -- left to bear decades or centuries of tradition and reputation on their shoulders. The moment they put on another uniform, they'll be consigning little slivers of history to the jaws of oblivion. You couldn't deny them their duty.

A handful have never been part of the imperial military. They're fliers who threw in with the Sian cause after the invasion, people whose skill and allegiance you trust enough to bring them on this most sacred of missions. Together they represent some of the finest the galaxy has to offer, men and women whose names echo across their profession -- spoken in tones of awe, admiration, or envy. Even here, surrounded by other elite pilots, they're attracting their fair share of attention.

Your gaze is drawn to one grey-haired veteran. She sits on the stairs leading up to her cockpit, glowing cybernetic eyes staring into space. Many glances are cast in her direction, and your aural implant echoes her name from numerous lips. But if she's aware of the scrutiny she gives no sign. She simply stares and waits, her right index finger tracing the flesh around the port in the side of her head. Soon she'll plug herself into her fighter ship, and become one with the craft.

Not all of the famed pilots are so detached from the general hubbub. Your eyes fall on a man in red, standing in the middle of an awestruck crowd that's comprised largely of women. Captain 'Ace' Flashheart... One of the greatest pilots in human space. You once heard new recruits in the mess hall arguing about who was better -- you or him. Most picked Flashheart. Well, he'll soon have a chance to prove them right or wrong.

But it isn't just pilots who'll be taking part in the attack.

Across the cavernous hangar, beyond the neat rows of avian predators, are bigger, bulkier ships. Transports. Larger bands of men and women are arrayed around them, making final weapons checks or engaging in conversation before boarding the craft that will ferry them to victory or destruction. There are squads of imperial warriors -- guardsmen, swordsmen, soldiers of all kinds. For them this is almost a pilgrimage, a duty to the Emperor, Princess, and all those who fell aboard the Child of Heaven. Some you selected because of their martial accolades, the skills and achievements which shone from their files. But others are here for different reasons. You gave preference to those who had once served aboard Illaria's cruiser, and to those whose kin perished in the attack -- died while you and she flew to ephemeral safety.

Alongside them are battle bots, their shining metal bodies arranged in perfect square formations. For now they're still, as motionless as the ships themselves -- warlike statues frozen in time, waiting with mechanical solemnity. You envy them their tranquility.

There are other allies as well, troopers and assassins, marksmen and maulers. Assorted killers ready to bring about their various methods of death once the boarding operation is underway.

Telemachus' mech looms above Ragnar, Lu Bu, and a group of Niflung berserkers. Its canopy is open, the young prince perched on the edge of the cockpit. From the look of him, and the way the berserkers' muscles tremble with the force of their roars, they're sharing tales of slaughter -- that which they've wrought in the past, or else the bloodshed they intend to bring about in the battle to come.

But the talk and preparations cease when the alert sounds. It's time.

"See you inside," Talia says.

The gunslinger sprints to her fighter, springs halfway up its stairway in one bound, then vaults into the cockpit with another.

You make for your own craft, dash up the stairs, and drop into the seat. It seems like forever since you last flew a fighter in battle -- ensconced on your own in a cockpit instead of sharing a flight cabin with your companions. An almost mournful aloneness tugs at you. But there's something else as well, a sensation made dominant by years of training and experience that have etched it deeper into your bones than mere thought or emotion. It's like coming home, returning to sanctuary and security, comfort and control. Perhaps this will be the last time... If so, you'll make it count.

Master Wu raised his eyebrows when you told him of your plan. You're a supreme commander now -- the Imperial Jian of the Sian Empire. In truth you should be overseeing this mission from the deck of a warship. But he didn't voice his objection. Perhaps he sensed it would be useless.

When you and Talia left the Child of Heaven, hurtling on your desperate escape, you each piloted a fighter. It's only fitting that you return that way.

On the last journey she was alone. You flew with good men and a great woman. This time there are only ghosts.

Between Heaven and Hell

The hangar's brightness falls away on either side as you fly into the blue energy barrier which seals its vast exit. Azure ripples flow across the cockpit before slipping away to stroke the rest of the ship behind -- relinquishing you to the eternal blackness of the void.

Endless freedom. The star-studded mantle of creation extends before you in its immeasurable dark waves. A theater in which you may move in any direction, unbound and uninhibited. There's nothing like piloting a fighter to bring home the supreme agility of space travel and astral combat.

That sensation, the instinctive delight, is banished in the next instant.

Your arc your craft to the right, joining the host of other fighters pouring from the warship, and see it.

The Child of Heaven. Or what's become of it.

Its hull is black, as though in mourning either for its mistress or for the fate which has befallen it -- the shining whiteness swallowed up, never again to delight mortal eye. Tainted by the void, corrupted by the wickedness of those who now dwell within. The brilliance of its prow, the magnificent gardens which once sang their song of beauty to all who gazed upon the cruiser, has been torn away. A blue and purple sheen glistens upon the gigantic expanse of window, but on the monitor this merciful obfuscation cannot conceal the devastation beyond.

As with the imperial gardens surrounding the palace on Sian, there's only ruination. Charred and blackened vistas fester in that once sumptuous space, hammering into mind and soul that this isn't her cruiser. Not anymore.

Smaller vessels hover around it like parasites, tiny fiends reveling in the gargantuan carcass they've drained of life and stripped of hope. They're moving into battle positions, abandoning the corpse in favor of fresh prey.

Wilex appears on one of the screens, outlined against a backdrop of chaos -- of humans and robots sitting or standing at dozens of tiered stations, flesh and metal fingers clicking controls or touching holographic projections which float before their faces like colorful veils. The bridge of the Asimov, the Chief Assembler's new warship.

"The Cybertollahs were right," he says. "If the Centurians learned what we did to the Zenith, they haven't found a way to defend against it yet. All communications are jammed."

"Understood."

It's a moot point perhaps. When you and Wu Tenchu drew up your battle plans alongside the admirals and generals, you foresaw that no help would come to the 32nd Fleet. The Centurians' other peripheral fleets will have their hands full, and no reinforcements are likely to arrive from deeper in Sian space. They can't spare the ships, not while they await the assault of the armadas you've gathered. If they're to have any hope of maintaining their gasp on the core worlds, the bulk of their spacecraft must hold those systems.

But even so, you relish the thought that the fleet commander aboard the Child of Heaven will be banging her fists against the communications console in impotent frustration.

No aid, and no chance of retreat. The 32nd Fleet is responsible for securing the nearby planets. They won't withdraw, and leave this system in your hands. They'll fight to the end. That suits you just fine.

The Centurians are fanning out, their fighters slipping into their attack patterns. The Child of Heaven looms in the gaping space at their center, ready to bring its cannons to bear.

You fly to meet them, to find your place in the celestial battlefield.

Slaying the Soldiers

It's almost like murder.

Each time you glance at the monitor, gaze out at the tapestry of flashing lasers and whooshing thrusters, you can see everything. Each ship's trajectory imprints itself on your brain, the mind of a master pilot anticipating the maneuvers of lesser fliers -- foretelling which patterns of attack or evasion they'll adopt perhaps even before they know it themselves. That's the essence of astral dogfighting: having a mind quick and adept enough to calculate, and reflexes swift enough to capitalize.

Explosions, one by one. Whenever you press the fire buttons another ship's wreckage is scattered, brief bursts of flame extinguished by the cold, insatiable void. Death dances against the twinkling stars, to the tune of fabricated explosions that exist only in your ears, mind, and memories.

No... There's no one among the Centurians who can match you.

Murder. Pure and bloody.

You pull your ship into a barrel roll, throwing it aside. A blue torrent of energy sears through the vacuum in its wake. One of the Child of Heaven's weapons, screaming for your obliteration.

The Asimov answers.

Missiles erupt from its battery, a volley of pointed cylinders that spiral through the stellar pandemonium -- wending their way between the laser fire, dodging the ships which rush across their path.

Not just missiles... Robots, each with a complex computerized brain. One of the Chief Assembler's special creations.

The Child of Heaven fires in their direction, a great lance cutting through the galactic night. But the intelligent projectiles scatter around the beam with the grace of fish navigating their aquatic realm.

One by one they reach the black cruiser, the dead dream. And they detonate -- buying the cannons' silence with their suicide.

"Launch the transports," you say. "We've cleared enough of a path for them."

You take one final glance at the scanners, assuring yourself that the other pilots can deal with the remaining Centurian fighter craft. Then you head for the Child of Heaven.

Blast doors are closing over the black cruiser's hangars, ebon eyelids making their lethargic descent. With its weapons gone it can no longer voice its rage, cry its defiance. Instead it wishes to shut the universe out. That's not going to work...

The Asimov speaks again. This time it utters gleaming shards, dark diamonds each inscribed with glowing cogs and gears that slowly spin in intricate arrangements. Mere affectations, concealing infinitely greater complexities within. Professor Mycroft, Katrina Malkov, and some of your more eclectic allies designed these. The products of many minds, all brilliant, all determined that their creations should be the catalyst in the Centurian Collective's defeat.

Those bizarre projectiles bite the hull around the hangar entrances, sinking deep into the metal. The luminous arrangements of machinery on their surfaces quicken, spinning faster and faster until their rotation is such a blur that it conceals the details of their design -- rendering them as smooth circles. Their colors shift, blue to green, purple to red. Then the hangars wake from their sleep, and open their eyes. The blast shields retract, responding once more to Sian codes instead of Centurian ones -- displaced sequences gaining mastery of what was once theirs.

Ruined glories escort you on your way, battle damage and vandalism mocking your reminiscences, cleaving through memory and supplanting it with reality. You ignore them. Soon it won't matter...

Shouting and weapons fire rage across the atriums and passages, telling the tale of revenge delivered. Men and robots, humans and aliens, filter through the ship -- enacting the battle plans you established before the assault.

They'll secure the cruiser, eliminate all resistance they encounter. As for you and your companions, there's something you have to do...

"The cells are over here," you whisper, letting the words slip into their aural implants.

Second Jailbreak

Telemachus is the first to round the corner. A scarlet barrage of lasers rips across his mech. His cannon arm returns fire. You're beside him in the next moment, along with the others. Talia's pistols whisper, Ragnar's machinegun roars. Lu Bu darts through the fire, springs down the stairs, and makes for the nearest of the Centurian troopers in their heavy blue armor. His clawed fingers tear through the plates at the soldier's throat.

Yes... Close and personal. Visceral.

You stow your gun and draw your jian. It wakes in your grasp, jade energy flickering into being around its edges.

A jump takes you down the stairs, onto the floor of the atrium. A roll puts you under the angry red that spits from a blaster's barrel. You emerge from the tumble in front of the shooter. Your green-glowing blade cleaves its way upwards, slipping through the blue armor, trespassing into the soft flesh beneath, splitting him from groin to throat.

The wound is clean, cauterized. Unsatisfying.

You deactivate the field when the next Centurian rushes at you, driving azure claws at your heart. His attack ends along with his arm. The foremost part of it clatters on the ground, still encased in the now useless weapon. Blood spurts from the stump and screams from his mouth. Your sword thrust pierces his faceplate with a soft crunch, ending the latter. The former will die soon enough, with the stilling of his heart.

The remaining Centurians run, unwilling to sacrifice their lives for the sake of duty. You can't blame them. What's the good of guarding cells when the ship is being overrun?

But their cowardice or pragmatism doesn't save them.

Ragnar takes the nearest of them, burying his blade in her spine. Talia drops the remainder. Each zapping beam from her pistol catches one in the back of the knee, piercing the joint and leaving them rolling on the floor. In a split-second the other end of the atrium is littered with screeching Centurians. Then Lu Bu moves in with his sword. A moment later there are only bodies.

You move through the doorway, enter the familiar corridor -- its walls lined with barred portals and shining barriers.

The control panel is there by the guard's station. You reach towards it. Then you realize that you don't know the code. She did... But not you.

"Can you hack it, Tel?"

"Step aside."

You move as his mech lumbers forward. It pauses in front of the panel. Then its arm shoots forward, its laser-edged chainsaw penetrating the panel amidst showers of sparks and electronic whines of protest.

Along the corridor, the barriers vanish. Cries of surprise emerge from the cells. Faces appear, pressed up against the bars.

"I could have hacked it," he explains. "But this was quicker."

You nod, then turn to encompass the others with your gaze.

"Break them out."

Fleet Commander Xarpa

The Centurians were telling the truth...

After the attack on the Child of Heaven, their ambassador assured the UHW that it had been conducted as a legitimate military operation -- that every effort had been made to spare the civilians aboard the cruiser. Whatever evidence they provided was convincing enough to the Union of Human Worlds' officials, and now you know it wasn't entirely counterfeit.

"Captain [Player Name]?"

The elderly woman clutches the bars of her cell, her brown knuckles whitening. It takes you a moment to recognize her with her hair loose and disheveled, her uniform replaced with a steel-colored prisoner's jumpsuit. The housekeeper, responsible for overseeing the maids and cleaning drones. A woman who had been on the ship for many years before you first walked its decks.

"Move back," you say. "I'll get you out of there."

The green field returns to your sword with a soft hum. A horizontal sweep cleaves through the bars as though they were butter. A second, lower stroke sends them tumbling.

The housekeeper steps out into the corridor, followed by the cell's other occupants. The last to move between what remains of the bars is a child, in his early teens from the look of him. Something about his features strikes a chord...

"You're Sergeant Tarik's boy, aren't you?"

He nods.

"Your father was a good man. He..."

"They told me what happened." His eyes flash. "You'll kill them? All of them?"

"All of them."

The boy nods. Then the housekeeper takes his arm, and leads him into the throng of men, women, and children pouring from the other cells. Talia is ushering them towards the exit and out into the atrium beyond -- where Telemachus and Lu Bu stand guard.

Ragnar tears the bars from the last cell, breaking them as a normal man might snap twigs. Then he steps aside, allowing a group of young girls to file past him. Three of them scurry along the passage, casting fearful glances over their shoulders at the brutish Niflung. But the fourth throws her arms around him -- or at least as far around his burly torso as she can manage -- and murmurs incoherent words of thanks before running after the others.

Out in the atrium the freed prisoners look this way and that, as if in disbelief at their newfound liberty or the sights and sounds which surround them. Most flinch, alarmed by the noises of distant gunfire and explosions, not knowing if their ordeal is yet over.

"How're we doing, Wilex?" you ask -- directing your sub-vocal question to the Asimov's bridge.

"We're meeting stiff resistance on a few of the decks."

"Where's it most serious?"

"There's a Centurian manning a turret in the largest atrium on your level. She's going crazy... Taken out the better part of two squads already."

"I'll see what I can do..." Your gaze roams across the civilians. "Is the path to our hangar still clear?"

"Yes. My battle bots have it secured."

You and Talia issue the instructions. These people know the two of you, trust you. Even as they cringe at the continued cacophony of death and destruction, they run off in the direction you indicated.

Then the five of you make your way in the opposite direction, heading towards the heart of the chaos.

Two men and a woman in white guardsman uniforms are crouched against the wall of one of the small buildings that line the grand atrium. They look round as you approach. But you stare past them, to the area beyond... To the killing ground.

Broken fragments of robot litter the space. Some are almost intact, but for the gaping holes in their chests or heads. Others are flaming, twisted chunks of scrap -- only recognizable as the remains of bots because of the traces of paintwork. There are corpses as well, and these have suffered just as grievously. Lakes of blood, chunks of charred gore, torn limbs and splattered brains... All the ugliness of war in a microcosm.

"Come on, you Sian bastards!" a woman's voice shrieks.

There's a roar of machinery, a shuddering, grinding burst of savage technology opening its maw. Gunfire rakes across the gruesome tableau, scattering scrap and body parts, tearing corpses into red ruins.

One of the guardsmen is fiddling with a rocket launcher. He gulps, pulls the weapon into a ready position, and starts to move.

Your hand clasps his shoulder.

"Pass me that. We'll handle this."

"Now!" you whisper.

Ragnar drops to one knee, his hands cupped. You jump at the same moment you activate your invisibility field.

The Niflung catches your boot, and flings you upwards. His arms are better than a trampoline. It's like being fired from a cannon.

You land on top of the building, in the remains of a sniper whose rifle lies shattered next to his torn-up torso. So someone else had this idea before you... But they didn't have your stealth technology. That'll buy you at least one shot. Then your position will be compromised...

The Centurian appears in the rocket launcher's sights, behind the turret's big mass, atop the raised metal frame of a platform. There's an insignia of rank on her armor. She's a fleet commander... The woman in charge of the Child of Heaven, along with its subordinate ships.

You aim for her head and pull the trigger.

But she's got her wits about her. The moment the rocket escapes the weapon, it leaves your field as well -- becomes visible as it flies towards her. She ducks behind the turret, and the projectile spins through the empty air above. It explodes against a distant building, shattering the scarred marble, sending chunks of it raining down.

You move, leaping onto the next building as her blind fire rakes the one you were standing on. The rocket launcher fires in your hands, clumsy unaimed shots as you keep yourself in motion. Yet one blundering rocket strikes home. It catches the corner of the turret, and as its explosion dies out you see that one of the turret's weapons has died with it. But the machine is sturdy, built to endure. The other guns keep blasting.

More fire comes from below, where your companions are opening up with their own armaments. Energy blasts from Telemachus' cannon sear across the turret's metal body, echoed by volleys of bullets spat by Ragnar's gun. A clutch of mini-missiles in one of its batteries explodes beneath the assault -- the small, sad detonations of munitions not yet made ready by their internal arming mechanisms.

The Centurian's helmet appears over the thick metal shielding, desperate to see what's going on, to regain the initiative. A laser clips her left eye and she collapses behind the turret once more. A split-second opening. That's all Talia ever needs.

But from the scream, the ferocious cry of an ancient Fury, fierce and primal, you know that the angle was wrong. Talia put out the helmet's eye, perhaps the human eye beneath, but didn't pierce her brain.

No matter... You're in place now.

Invisibility sloughs from you, the field spent for now. It's served its purpose. You're on top of the building nearest the turret platform...

Your companions fire one last barrage as you leap, keeping the fleet commander pinned down, sparing you from the turret's savage mouths. Then their weapons stop. You spare a glance, and see that they're running towards the platform to support you. It won't be necessary.

You toss the rocket launcher aside. That won't be necessary either.

The fleet commander rises. The helmet is off her head, discarded on the floor of the platform. It stares up at you through its eyes -- one bright, the other dull, broken, and lifeless. She whirls round, gazes at you through two undamaged eyes. She was lucky. But her luck's run out.

Her right hand gropes for her pistol.

Your blood rages, surges, seethes. It crashes inside your veins and arteries, hammers at your heart, floods into your brain. Darkness dances at the edges of your vision. Something's clawing at the base of your spine, wrapping itself around your organs.

"Kasan..."

Does the word matter? You don't know. But it feels... necessary. It...

Your fist glows. The blood's slamming against your skin, splashing from side to side, ready to tear from your flesh... The darkness deepens. It's a tunnel, a void, an abyss. You're staring at the world through tiny pinpoints, little circles of illumination.

Her pistol rises.

Your fist lashes out.

Something cracks. Something explodes. Redness...

Redness... It's her. Illaria. She's in front of you, in the darkness. Her face is gone... a ruin... Crushed bone, shattered skull, burst brain... Redness. Only redness.

Your fist is red as well, painted with its guilt.

Her body falls away, collapses, crumples.

And he's standing above her, in his robes, glaring at you in horror, in agony, in fury. The Emperor.

"Murderer!" he cries. "Murderer!"

"No! I-"

But he's right. You murdered her, just like you'll murder him. Because you're the darkness, the screaming blood, the orange eyes.

You lunge, throwing your body into the punch -- driving your fist at his horrified face.

He leaps backwards, slipping beyond the reach of your snapping blow. You move to follow up, to strike again, to murder...

But something grabs your arms, something strong and inescapable that clinches and clutches. You struggle, thrash, but you can't break free. The darkness has you.

"[Player Name]!"

A woman's voice. Her voice! But she's dead... You murdered her. You-

"[Player Name]!"

No, not her voice. It's...

"What happened?" Another voice. A boy's...

"I don't know. She just..."

"What do we do?" A gruff, growling man's voice. "Get [Gender] back to the ship?"

"I... No. We shouldn't let anyone see [Gender] like this. We..."

"Talia?" you murmur.

The blackness is fading. The abyss is giving you up, pulling way -- cheated, thwarted, disappointed. For now.

Light expands in the middle of nothingness, widening until it creates the universe.

Talia... Her face a mask of pain and worry.

Your arms... Why can't you...

Your head rolls to one side, then the other. Ragnar and Lu Bu, each of them grabbing you, holding your limbs in place with their muscular, mechanical might.

"Let [Gender] go," Talia says.

"You sure?" Ragnar grunts.

But the Niflung releases you. So does the robot.

"What happened?" you ask.

"You..." the gunslinger begins.

"You tried to kill Talia!" Telemachus cries.

The prince is next to her, out of his mech. His young face is pale.

"No! I-" You look around, trying to find something, anything that will help you make sense of this.

Your eyes fall on the woman's body. Her upturned face is a bloody mess, like she was blasted with a shotgun. A tremor works its way through your body, recollections tear at you. Your gaze shifts, focusing on her armor -- the dark, thick plate on her shoulder. The Centurian symbol is emblazoned there. There's blood splashed across it.

Yes... You hit her... Used the Imperial Fist. Your chi. Your blood. And then...

Another tremor, another shudder. It wasn't her. It was... her. And then...

You feel the blood draining from your face as you look up at Talia.

"It's okay..." she says. "I dodged. You're fast, but you're not that fast."

She smiles. But it's hollow... The ghost of a smile.

"I don't... I..."

"Perhaps for now we should return to the Asimov," Lu Bu says.

"But..."

"I've spoken with Wilex. Our forces will soon secure the Child of Heaven. There's nothing left for us here."

The five of you stand at the window, the floor-to-ceiling expanse of glass that looks out onto the star-studded universe. The Child of Heaven floats there alone, its silent black mass darker than void itself.

"Do it," you whisper.

The explosion rips through the cruiser, a gigantic inferno that bursts from within -- erupting from its hull in a thousand places, melting and consuming in its fiery wrath. Dozens of smaller blooms ripple in its wake, fanning out across the ship in their voracity. Then there's one final detonation, an immense discharge of energy that tears it apart -- hurling fragments in all directions, casting them into the void to wander for all eternity.

You couldn't have kept it.

It could have been repaired, repainted, restored. Made to look exactly as it once did. A jewel of the empire, a craft worthy of an emperor, or a princess. But it would never have carried her again, never again surrounded her with its magnificence and in turn been illuminated by hers.

No... The Child of Heaven died when she did.

Talia puts her arm around you. The five of you watch the debris scatter, slipping beyond the scope of your vision.

"Are you ready?" she asks.

"Yes."

She says nothing, gives no sign. But you know her well enough to sense her unease all the same.

Your friends made you tell Master Wu what happened, forced you to seek his counsel. Yet there are some things even the cunning mandarin doesn't truly understand. All he could do was admonish you not to draw upon your power again.

"There's too much at stake," he said, "for you to jeopardize it with a moment's recklessness."

He was right... Sian is waiting for you. It isn't time to give into the darkness. Not yet...

|-|

Black Skies over Sian=
Black Skies over Sian

"Welcome aboard the Illaria, Lady/Lord [Player Name]."

The young woman's hands make a frantic tug at the hem of her uniform, as though realizing that it might not be quite neat enough for such august company. She tries to salute, bow, and courtesy at the same time -- a flustered confusion of protocol that almost makes her fall over.

Her face reddens. She looks away as she gestures to the chair she's just vacated. The bridge's other inhabitants are careful to face forward, suppressing whatever amusement they might feel out of good nature or a natural wariness at being seen smirking at a superior's misfortune.

"No, thank you, captain," you reply.

Surprise overcomes her awkwardness, prompting her to restore eye contact.

"Milady/Milord? I don't understand."

"I'll be overseeing the battle from the war room. The bridge is yours."

She gasps. Her mouth drops open. The expression makes her look like a startled schoolgirl. This invokes your sympathy, but it pleases you as well. That's why you chose her. Master Wu and the others expected you to pick a seasoned veteran. Instead you selected a young but talented commander to serve as your second in command aboard the Illaria. Their surprise was palpable, though no one thought to question you. If they had, you would have told them lies or half-truths.

You wanted someone who wouldn't have the confidence to challenge you...

"Directing the fleet will take all my attention. I'm sure I can trust you to keep us from being destroyed while I do that."

"Yes, milady/milord! Of course, milady/milord!"

This time she settles for a bow of her head. You return the gesture, then make for the door at the back of the bridge.

It slides shut behind you. A tap of the panel ensures it won't open except at your behest.

You sit in the soft, supremely comfortable chair in the middle of the chamber. There's an old pilot's joke that the comfort of one's buttocks is directly proportional to one's rank. It now seems plausible.

That chair is the room's only seat. There's just one other piece of furniture: the big, curved table that forms a crescent around it. Numerous terminals and fixed screens clutter its surface, all carefully designed and arranged by people who use words such as 'ergonomics' in their professional life, before being repositioned according to your instructions.

You press a button on one of the panels. Beams of light launch into the air like fireworks, broadening and sharpening into holographic screens. Once they're deployed, dozens of images float before you -- filling the front portion of the chamber.

From here you can manage things with far more efficiency than on the bridge. All the data is at your fingertips. There are no distractions. You weren't lying to the young captain. It's just that you didn't tell her the whole truth...

A gesture causes one group of holographic screens to emerge from the collection and enlarge themselves -- shunting their brethren aside. Some contain charts and diagrams, depicting systems. Others show recorded footage of space combat, windows of victory and destruction. The remainder are dominated by text and numbers.

Between them they tell the tale of the initial battles.

There are casualty figures, fallen warriors and bereaved families reduced to cold, clinical mathematics.

So many losses... On hundreds of worlds, weeping widows and widowers, along with orphaned children, will be lamenting the day their loved ones went to war on behalf of the Sian Empire.

But things are going in your favor.

Most of the peripheral fleets fared no better than the 32nd. And those which did, that managed to repel their adversaries or lock them into costly and as yet indecisive battles, are now the target of cruisers and squadrons fresh from other engagements -- fired up by victory and ready to triumph again.

When the Centurians attacked Sian, smashed through the Golden Armada, they had the advantage. Your forces hadn't been prepared to face Besalaad technology. But now... The moment you captured the Zenith, and had the opportunity to understand what their alien masters had provided them with, you were able to devise your countermeasures -- aided by your new friends from human space and beyond.

The Besalaad are an advanced species, a powerful empire. But whilst they may have given the Collective some choice weapons and other such tools, it's certain that they didn't give their allies the best they themselves possessed. Their goal was likely to keep their involvement a secret for far longer, to conceal their hands until the right time. It wouldn't have served them well to arm the Centurians with technologies far beyond those they could ever have devised on their own. Nor would clever imperialists like the Besalaad have been so foolish as to hand their new minions their most valuable treasures.

These were the conclusions you all came to. And the numbers on the screens seem to prove you right.

You dismiss those windows, sending them back into obscurity, putting the dead and their mourners from sight and mind. A commander can't afford to dwell on such things. Not while there's still so much fighting to be done.

"Wu Tenchu, Wilex..."

Your words cause two screens to push their way to prominence. One shows the Chief Assembler in his private chamber aboard the Asimov, the other the mandarin ensconced in a private war room similar to your own.

"Any sign?" you ask.

Wilex shakes his head.

"None at all."

"Our surmise appears to have been correct," Master Wu adds. "The Centurians are no longer useful."

"Perhaps not..." you muse.

But your hand twitches, half-consciously reaching towards one of the terminals. You have your contingency plans...

There's a row of green lights on one of the fixed monitors. Beside each is the name of a ship. The Asimov is there, along with the Illaria and countless others. All have signaled their readiness.

You conjure forth a screen showing the room beyond the sealed door -- the bridge of your flagship.

The young captain looks up, then salutes with such force that her head rocks backwards from the impact.

"Yes, milady/milord?"

"Captain Silea!" Wu Tenchu says. "The proper form of address to an Imperial Jian during a state of combat readiness is 'Lord Commander', regardless of sex!"

"Sorry, milord!" She bites her lower lip.

The mandarin's eyes narrow.

"Captain," you say, "power up the hyperspace engines. Make the jump."

"Yes, mil... Lord Commander!"

You dismiss Wilex and Wu Tenchu before either of them can ask why you're not on the bridge yourself, occupying the captain's chair. This part of the plan is entirely your own.

A press of a button and the Silver Shadow appears on one of the fixed monitors. The craft is nestled among countless other spaceships in one of your hangars, nearly lost amongst the vast assortment. Another button switches the view to the inside of its flight cabin.

Talia's sat in the pilot's seat, Lu Bu in the co-pilot's chair. Behind them you see Telemachus at the gunner station and Ragnar hefting his axe as though testing its weight in anticipation.

"We're about to jump," you say.

"Yeah, we heard the alert, captain."

Captain... Even if you became supreme ruler of mankind, you'd still be 'the captain' to her.

"I'll see you on Sian," you say.

She nods.

You touch the terminal and the image disappears, swallowed by blackness.

Astral Warfare

The Centurians don't want to lose this system. If you ever doubted their determination, the images on the holographic screens would shatter those delusions.

Swaths of red daub the scanner display, so many blips that they seem to coalesce into one great three-dimensional mass. Hundreds and hundreds of ships fill the other screens, a massive armada which must comprise a huge chunk of the Centurians' remaining forces.

And more are arriving each moment. Fresh vessels drop from hyperspace -- swarms of fighters, squadrons of bigger, more menacing craft.

According to the other displays, allied fleets fighting in many of the peripheral systems report that the Collective are disengaging -- fleeing into the void, risking their lives by making jumps in the middle of combat.

"Inform those fleet commanders," you say. "Tell them to reinforce us."

A chorus of affirmations ring out.

But there's no time to wait for those reinforcements. The Centurians' weapons are opening up, their shoals of fighters approaching.

You give the signal to meet the attack.

On one of the screens, linked to a camera mounted on the outside of the Illaria's hull, the Silver Shadow plunges through the energy barrier that protects a hangar. It soars off, its elegant argentine body escaping the camera's sphere of vision.

You make a series of gestures. The external view of the hangar entrance vanishes. Instead the Silver Shadow returns, tracked by one of the other cameras as it swoops through the void. A blue dot appears on the main scanners as well, pinpointing its position amidst the bulges of green and red.

You have an entire battle to oversee. You shouldn't be concentrating on one ship, allowing yourself to be distracted. And yet you can't bring yourself to relinquish it.

An oblong window enlarges until it dominates the area devoted to the holographic screens, the others slotting into the space around it. This one shows a sweeping vista, allowing you to view almost the totality of the battle. It's the feed from one of the drones, positioned well back from the fleet. There's the Illaria, surrounded by a golden glow so that you can pick your position out. The Silver shadow is a blue spec, its location likewise highlighted in accordance with your instructions.

Just like when you were in the cockpit, you begin to track and analyze, plan and anticipate.

Flashing lasers, blooming explosions...

Zoomed-in views appear on the surrounding screens, each one drawing you into the destruction -- allowing you to see allies and enemies maneuver and fire, triumph or perish.

Fighters chase one another, weaving their beautiful dances of death like birds of prey. Dozens of tiny explosions flare between the networks of lancing beams and zapping blasts as pilots are found wanting or else simply find fate set against them.

Bigger ships surge through the deadly illuminations, bombarding the universe around them with powerful weapons. But not even the mightiest craft are immune to the cruel mistress that is stellar combat. A Sian vessel, its hull painted with a series of gorgeous patterns that coalesce to form the imperial symbol, presses itself into the fray -- lasers zapping in all directions. Then a gigantic orange blast, an infernal spear of energy, catches it square on the prow. There's one immense flash, the color of a sunrise. After that there's only wreckage.

A dozen times you have to resist the urge to open a connection to one of your ships, to yell instructions. You can't distract the pilots and commanders, can't disrupt the battle plans with arrogant micromanagement of individual spacecraft.

Your job is to concentrate on the battle as a whole, to direct forces as needed and hold your tongue when not.

Again the blue dot draws your eye. An instinctive gesture makes the Silver Shadow appear on a peripheral screen. The ship is spinning through a torrent of laser fire, accompanied by a squadron of other fighters that fan out from it in a series of loose, V-shaped formations which leave the argentine craft at their collective tip. Two of those fighters burst into flame, sliced by crimson blasts.

Missiles fly from the Shadow, unhidden by their cloaking devices. Too much risk of allies flying into them otherwise... Most forage for their targets with the unmistakable movements of automation. But one of them spins a deft path through the fray until it picks off one of the troublesome Centurian fighters with a potent detonation. Telemachus' handiwork, no doubt.

You begin to withdraw your gaze, directing it elsewhere through force of will, when something forestalls you. There's a flash near that little pocket of battle, on the edge of the screen. A quick hand motion adjusts the view, centering on it. More ships, emerging from hyperspace.

Wait...

The image zooms in further, magnifying the newcomers, rendering the suspicious familiarity indisputable. A huge squadron of fighters... Each of them fashioned in the image of the blackened Child of Heaven.

These weren't in any of the intelligence reports. None of your fleets reported encountering them. They must have come from deep in Centurian space, held in reserve -- ready to be unleashed in the hope of turning this battle.

All that passes through your mind in an instant. Then the carnage starts.

The miniature doppelgangers swim across the void like a school of piranhas, firing small simulacrums of the fallen cruiser's own weapons. They swarm across a nearby TALOS ship, their weapons slashing and slicing -- biting until it's devoured, torn to bits by external abuse and internal explosions.

Then they're on the Silver Shadow's squadron.

Talia spins the ship, evading the first barrage. She returns fire. The argentine craft's weapons rip through the middle of one of the fighters -- almost splitting it in two before the explosion ruins the elegance of its demise.

But her allies aren't as capable as the gunslinger. The black swarm descends upon them, their intersecting fire picking three to pieces before their pilots can even begin to evade.

"Go invisible..." you murmur. "Disappear..."

But you know she won't. Not while she has what's left of her squadron flying alongside her.

Another Sian fighter dies in flame.

The black ships, bastards of heaven, converge on the Silver Shadow and the others, placing your friends in the middle of a labyrinthine conjunction of laser death -- forcing them to weave between the lethal beams that threaten to puncture their hull and cast them to the void.

You try to plot their movements, anticipate the unfolding of the engagement. Talia is almost impossible to predict. So unorthodox, creative and sudden to the point of insanity when she flies. But you can sense the possibilities all the same. A dozen futures, and all of them end in death.

Void Killer Vengeance

You open channels, bark orders. All the while your gaze follows the whirling, darting argentine ship as it slips between the lasers with impossible, nerve-racking grace -- expecting a blast to strike it at any second.

On a scanner display the blue blip and a few green stragglers are surrounded by red dots, like doomed stones on a weiqi board.

But more green blips are approaching from the periphery. An impatient sweep of your hand widens one of the screens, throwing its edge out until it captures the relief force -- squads of fighters held in reserve and now deployed by your command. It was the quickest way... The others would have taken too long...

The Centurian ships, children of black heavens, fan out -- loosening their grasp on the Silver Shadow and the others as they prepare for the onslaught. Their crimson lasers flash towards new targets.

A Snuuth craft is transfixed by two cutting beams. It explodes in an opening flower of flame, leaving its brethren to continue on their way with a gap in their formation. A Sian Dragon Fighter does the same -- succumbing to a well-placed blast that catches it on the underside of its cockpit and annihilates the front quarter of the ship.

You try to tell yourself that you aren't buying your friends' lives with theirs, that the Centurian reinforcements had to be eliminated. Perhaps part of you even believes it.

The Silver Shadow is free now, no longer trapped in its desperate patterns of evasion. It becomes a weapon in Talia's hands once more, predator instead of prey. Argentine death. It swoops down on one of the black ships, its blasters crashing down upon its hull like the lightning bolts of ancient gods. The vessel is still burning, the fire not yet swallowed by the vacuum, when the next one joins it.

They're safe.

Lines of movement, routes of attack... Yes, you can see them all. With your squads there, the future has been rewritten. It's the Centurian fighters' deaths which are inscribed there now. They won't come without a price. They're costing you the better part of three reserve squads, precious ships and still more precious blood. But they'll come.

Your unfitness for this role coils in your guts.

It's one thing to make battle plans, to send men and women to their deaths, when you know you'll be flying among them -- facing the same dangers, running the same risks, making the same sacrifices. But this... Safe on your flagship... This is different. Once this is all over...

You tear those thoughts from you, rip them from your brain. Now isn't the time to contemplate such things. Not while there's a battle raging.

The panoramic view of the conflict returns to center stage. That's what you should be focusing on. Your duty... To the empire. To her.

Streams of text, details of damage and destruction, cascade beside it -- a waterfall of data which will chronicle your ultimate victory or defeat. Sian ships have borne the brunt of things. You see countless entries, scarlet lines of information, about squadrons ravaged by losses or entirely wiped out -- pilots who were the last of their units now joining their brethren in the sands of time and the pages of history books.

Your fellow subjects are putting themselves into the heart of the battle and facing the greatest dangers. They can do no less. Not with that blue-green orb revolving beyond the Centurian armada. How could they let their allies perish to liberate Sian, without inscribing their gratitude on the void with their own shed blood?

The Centurians are paying dear for every life. Their own losses are almost inconceivable -- perhaps the most they've ever suffered in a single battle, or even an entire campaign.

Innumerable dead, and things are still in the lap of the gods.

"Attention, wretched human stink-beast..."

Your attention falls on one of the small holographic screens. It expands, pushing aside the other minimized windows on that side of the main battle view, to reveal the face of a blue-skinned Rylattu female.

"Our superior technology shows evidence of imminent hyperspace arrivals!"

Another screen unfolds beside hers, further displacing the others. It contains a mass of strange, distorted colors -- a medley of blues and purples. It takes you a moment to realize that you're seeing an empty portion of space at the periphery of the battle, through the filter of some kind of bizarre, psychedelic lens.

A marker appears on the huge panorama of the battle, denoting the location of this incandescent blur.

"I don't-" you begin.

"Energy signatures!"

The colors are shifting, contracting, gathering as though to form... The outlines of starships.

Familiar shapes come into being, long hulls adorned with crackling expanses of contained energy.

Void Killers. But these are different from those you've fought before, and the ones elsewhere in this astral battlefield... They're larger. And something tells you that this isn't the extent of their enhancements.

You can just make out the markings on their sides. They're from the 3rd Fleet. One of the guard dog fleets. They never leave Alpha Centauri... The Centurian Collective are whittling down their home system's defenses for the sake of bolstering the armada guarding Sian. They're getting desperate...

The thought thrills you. But only for a moment. Then the Void Killers open their hatches.

Glittering streams gush from them, billowing out into great clouds of silver mist. Hundreds upon hundreds of drones, unleashed to destroy.

A Bigger Fish

It's like a gas, a toxic fog that brings death wherever it drifts. Ships fall into its bulging, amorphous clouds, then disappear in muffled flashes of crimson and yellow.

"Anti-drone countermeasures!" you say. "Now!"

But you see what's happened.

The Collective picked their moment well. The ships designed to neutralize drones are tied up on the other side of the battle, where they've been assisting against conventional Void Killer squadrons. So, that's why your enemies clustered them over there... Now your craft are bogged down in heavy fighting, pinned by the Centurian ships that swirl around them like spiders spinning an ensnaring web. They're struggling to survive. By the time their comrades could extricate them, and escort them to the advanced Void Killers that are causing such havoc elsewhere...

But one ship is flying towards the murderous clouds, a vessel with a sleek, sloping hull. The Odyssey -- the craft you gave to the professor...

"Mycroft?"

The man from Diogenes appears in profile on a screen. He's fiddling with an incomprehensible terminal of some sort.

"One moment! One moment!" He doesn't trouble to so much as glance towards you.

"Tell your pilot to turn around! He's taking you into-"

"I'm sorry, but I really must focus on my calculations."

One of his mechanical servitor arms darts towards the camera. The screen goes blank.

"Mycroft!"

The screen flashes back to life. But this time it shows a young man who wears a blue jumpsuit on his broad-shouldered frame and a look of resignation on his dark, handsome features.

"Thaddeus Trest," he says. "The professor's pilot."

"You're flying towards those Void Killers!"

"Yes, Lord Commander. The professor's orders. He believes we can be of assistance with that particular problem."

"I can disrupt the drones!" Mycroft's voice comes from some hidden recess of the Odyssey's bridge, beyond your sight. "But only for a short time. You'll have a small window in which to destroy the Void Killers. Now stop distracting me!"

The screen goes blank once more.

On another floating panel you see the Odyssey continuing on its path, making for the dangerous ships and their deadly clouds.

Your eyes flash across the main screen, picking out the positions of each unit. There must be... Yes! That should work...

You open another channel.

"Commander Chun, I want those Void Killers destroyed. Move your squadron into position."

"As you wish, Lord Commander," comes a woman's voice. "But against those drones..."

"Don't worry about the drones."

You hope that did a better job of convincing her than it did of convincing yourself.

The elegant, curved body of the Odyssey is near the edge of the silver cloud now. The fog seethes towards it, yearning for a fresh morsel.

Dozens of tiny crimson lasers flash, ripple against its shields like a torrential downpour bombarding a puddle.

And the Odyssey explodes.

No... It didn't explode.

There's an eruption of orange, but it isn't flame -- not a herald of the famed ship and celebrated professor's demise. It's like electricity... Crackling, dancing tendrils that caper around the hull before flaring in all directions.

The nearest of the drones flash in turn, their minute silver bodies crackling as though in vain emulation. Others follow suit, the orange tendrils skipping and jumping throughout the entire vast host until the cloud itself seems to change color -- as though infused by the brilliance of a sun it sought to conceal with its voluminous expanse.

"Now, Chun!"

But the commander's squad is already diving.

Sword ships, spacecraft fashioned in the shape of gigantic blades. And it's not just for show...

The wave of celestial weapons plunges through the crackling clouds. Haywire drones offer no impediment. They break by the dozen, splattered against protective energy fields like bugs against a windshield. Then come the great collisions.

Sword-tip prows pierce the Void Killers, penetrating their hulls, tearing through their innards. The rest of the blade-shaped crafts follow, widening the gaps, smashing through in their wake -- creating grievous, fatal wounds.

One of the Sian vessels explodes in the midst of its transfixed enemy, its glorious thrust ending in heroic sacrifice. Perhaps its shields failed, or else it encountered something particularly destructive in that portion of the Void Killer.

But the others emerge from the opposite sides, unscathed and victorious. Behind them the Centurian ships float as mangled, blazing wreckage. A worthy monument for the fallen Sian warriors.

The crackling orange energy has dissipated, released the drones from its grasp. But they're lifeless now, drifting on invisible currents.

Cheers emerge from perhaps a dozen of the screens, protocol abandoned in the thrill of victory. But a raised alien voice grinds through them all.

"Stink-beasts! There are more energy signatures! More ships are emerging from hyperspace!"

Silence descends. Your gaze flicks to the Rylattu's feed. This time it shows a broader sweep of space, a greater swath of blue and purple. The breath catches in your throat.

Have they come after all? Your hand twitches once more.

But the shapes resolve themselves into recognizable vessels. Familiar enemies. More Centurians. A fresh wave of fighters and cruisers. More forces torn from Alpha Centauri. A grim smile crosses your face. It would have been far more advantageous for them to dispatch these ships earlier, to support their Void Killers rather than throwing their fleet in piecemeal. They must be getting desperate. There may even be a rift in the Centurian High Council -- furious arguments about whether good ships should be thrown after bad.

The thought delights you. But it can wait. For the moment...

"Captain..." you say.

"Yes, Lord Commander?"

There's no trepidation in Silea's voice now. No clumsy salute on the holo-screen. With combat raging she's in her element, filled with a warrior's confidence. Just like you at her age. When the shooting started, the universe became yours.

"Take us in. Engage the nearest cruiser. All weapons."

There's a faintest pause. Then she smiles. She wants this just as much as you do.

"Of course, Lord Commander."

To hell with holding back, observing, and directing. It's time to destroy...

Galactic Reaver

The Illaria is a beautiful, graceful spacecraft. Her elegant curves and sleek design resemble those of a fighter or a voyager rather than a warship. The gold and sapphire adornments on her hull give her the countenance of a precious treasure, a gleaming jewel.

But like the woman after whom the vessel was named, in whose honor she now flies, there's boundless strength within.

Artfully concealed weapons unleash their fury, cry out in vengeance. Their blasts thunder against the Centurian craft, battering its shields, making its hull shudder beneath their might.

Nearby allies lend their weapons, and for one foolish moment you think of ordering them to hold fire -- lest they deny you your kill. But such vaingloriousness was never her way. And your comrades have earned the right to drink their fill of blood.

A group of Doomsday Devices fly into position. Each is a titanic cannon, almost its entire body devoted to the weapon. They're more like pieces of artillery than vessels, designed not for exploration or travel or any other purpose save one: to obliterate. Their massive mouths open. Doom spews forth.

The cruiser's shields flash, one final moan as though demanding to know how they could be expected to endure such punishment. Then the explosions start, as the Doomsday Devices' weapons and your own set greedy maws on the unveiled metal.

Other ships converge, like wolves encircling a wounded deer, vultures descending upon a corpse. They smell blood, want their portion of the grim feast.

Explosions roar across the cruiser's hull, a symphony of synthesized sound. When they're gone, it's just a drifting, broken hulk.

Now you have the taste for blood as well.

You scan the screens, like an ancient warlord in search of fresh worlds to conquer. And this time you want a more substantial enemy.

There, across the pandemonium... Outlined against the planet. A massive craft, perhaps the biggest in the Collective's armada. Their flagship in this battle, it seems. It's held back from the fray just as you did -- observing and directing instead of bringing its mighty weapons to bear.

You'll put a stop to that.

"Captain Silea, you see that Galactic Reaver?"

"Engage it?"

"Yes."

You feel the tremor, undulating beneath the soles of your boots. Then another, that rocks your chair and makes the world shudder around you.

"We're hit, Lord Commander." There's no panic in Silea's voice, no anxiousness in the face on the screen. She might as well be informing you that dinner is being served in the canteen.

"I noticed."

Half a dozen screens of equal size, arranged in a grid, show you the situation from as many different angles. The Illaria and the Galactic Reaver, locked in combat -- a grey mass that somehow reminds you of a giant metal anteater blasting away at the smaller warship that circles around it and returns fire.

Other craft are gathering, weighing in on one side or the other. Now that the two command ships are clashing, their black king and your white queen, everyone wants to pitch into the fray. The broader battle still rages around you. This is but one portion of astral aggression among dozens and dozens of others. And yet you know that this exchange, this galactic duel, celestial skirmish, will end it all.

An image flashes across your mind. A white gleaming gown. Redness.

Some blows can change everything. The loss of a leader, a champion... Spirits can break just as easily as metal.

The Illaria fires another burst, weapons strafing the grey hull as Silea tries to put you out of the line of return fire. But the yellow beam lances towards you, crashes against your shields. Another tremor.

Your captain is skilled, capable. But she's far from masterful when it comes to the intricacies of warship to warship combat. In truth, neither are you. You're a pilot...

You reach out and press a button.

The terminals in front of you shift, screens and control panels moving aside with the soundless efficiency of precision engineering. Something unfolds with the same noiselessness. You recline in your chair, its back adjusting to your movement, and take hold of the emerging contraption.

Holographic windows give way just like the terminals, the multi-angled displays of the Illaria and Galactic Reaver slipping aside to yield their space to an immense rectangle. This time it doesn't show the panorama, the martial vista, from a distant point. You're looking at the Centurian flagship as though through the Illaria's own eyes.

During your days at the academy you studied millennia of military history. As a gifted pilot, many of the classes you attended focused on naval battles -- the archaic precursors to space combat, in the days when water rather than the void represented the alien element for which mankind had to adapt the ways of war.

Among the innumerable facts which battered your brain in an effort to secure purchase there, you learned about a tactic employed by certain ancient and medieval forces whose martial knowledge and experience focused on land combat. Rather than attempting to engage in clumsy naval tactics for which they were ill-equipped, they instead drew their ships alongside those of their enemies and fastened the vessels together. Thus they created a floating battlefield, on which they could use their swords and spears to slay their foes. A stratagem almost childish in its simplicity. But effective nonetheless. Useful enough to have survived to the modern day, echoed by Niflung boarding tactics and the like.

It was a valuable lesson. If you aren't adept at one form of combat, perhaps you should turn the situation into one which better favors you.

You press another control.

"We've lost primary weapons and thrusters!" Now there's panic in Silea's voice. Of course there is. It's every captain's worst nightmare -- to be in the middle of a life or death struggle and find that your ship has inexplicably betrayed you.

"Don't worry, captain."

"But-"

"I've taken them."

You test the controls in your hands. They respond as if they were born to feel your touch. As indeed they were. Another contingency plan, set in motion when the Illaria was being brought to life in the shipyard.

The Galactic Reaver's main blaster cannons fire. Twin yellow beams flash straight at you, as though they'll break through the surface of the holographic screen and annihilate you in your chair.

You throw the craft into a spin, evading the clumsy fire. Then you plunge into an attack pattern -- your weapons raking against the shimmering barriers that appear over the Reaver's grey hull.

"Captain, are you flying that thing?" Talia's voice sounds in your ear.

"Why not?"

The gunslinger laughs.

You twirl the ship through the void, making her a dancer performing on the black heavens' interstellar stage. The ship's artificial gravity serves its purpose admirably -- keeping you and your crew anchored to the floor instead of throwing you against the walls or ceiling.

There are bleeps from several of the screens. Probably people wanting to know why you've taken leave of your senses. You silence them all with a gesture.

Granted, most commanders placed in charge of a flagship would be deemed insane if they tried anything like this. But most flagship commanders aren't ace pilots...

Sapphire-colored lasers whisper across the Reaver's shields, probing and weakening. The immense anteater swivels, as though trying to keep its great metal snout pointed at the Illaria. Its commander wants your ship in reach of its most powerful weapons. Good luck with that...

Another dive, then a sharp ascent. The Illaria's graceful shape and powerful, tactically placed thrusters give her unsurpassed agility for a vessel her size. And you know how to turn it to good use in the shifting, whirling theater of space combat. More weapons fire, pummeling the Reaver's underbelly.

Still the grey flagship tries to chase you, a dog trying to catch its own tail. Like you, the Galactic Reaver should be overseeing the battle -- commanding its forces. Instead it's trying to fight the ship which runs rings around it. A glance at the secondary displays reveals that this distraction isn't to their benefit.

Whereas your fleet may well have been left in superior hands. For by prior arrangement Master Wu was to take command if you were killed or otherwise incapacitated, and you signaled him to do so the moment you began your unorthodox dogfight.

So it is that your comrades, inspired by the way you're making a fool of the Centurian flagship, aided by Wu Tenchu's cunning mind, are striking hard against the Collective's fleet. More and more are converging on the duel between the Illaria and Reaver as well, lending their support and their weapons.

And you still haven't played your trump card.

"Captain Silea, open a communication channel with them."

"With the Reaver?"

"Yes. I doubt their commander will refuse it."

A moment later the pale, scarred face of a middle-aged man appears above your primary viewing screen. He's standing at his command station, clenching its sides with fingers even paler than his face.

You knew he'd accept. He wants to see the woman he's dueling. Good...

"If you wish to make your surrender..." he says.

"I don't. I just wanted to deliver a message. Behind you."

The man whirls round, his hand groping for a sidearm. He freezes in place, his body tensing, the back of his neck reddening as he realizes that he's been made a fool of.

"That's not what I meant..."

You break the connection.

There's a flash on one of the tertiary monitors. It shows the area of space beyond the Galactic Reaver. The brightness dissipates in a split-second, as the Asimov and the rest of Wilex's fleet complete their hyperspace jump -- arriving fresh from their victory above Zhen Bao.

"Unload everything," you say.

The Chief Assembler does. So do you. So do all the other ships swarming around the grey anteater.

It's overkill. It's glorious.

|-|

Dogs and Vultures=
Dogs and Vultures

"No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.
I wish only that my spirit and fury would drive me
to hack your meat away and eat it raw for the things that
you have done to me. So there is no one who can hold the dogs off
from your head, not if they bring here and set before me ten times
and twenty times the ransom, and promise more in addition,
not if Priam son of Dardanos should offer to weigh out
your bulk in gold; not even so shall the lady your mother
who herself bore you lay you on the death-bed and mourn you:
no, but the dogs and the birds will have you all for their feasting."

-- Homer, Iliad 22.345-54 (Lattimore trans.)

"You want the pilot's seat?" Talia asks.

"All yours."

Lu Bu stands as well, surrendering the co-pilot's chair. But you motion for him to keep it. The gunslinger and robot warrior both seem surprised as they sit back down.

You take a seat in the corner of the flight cabin instead, and watch as Talia takes you into the air -- flying the Silver Shadow towards the hangar's gleaming energy field.

The ship shoots into the void, before curving round towards the planet. Sian.

Your friends were eager to join the liberation forces. But after the last of the Centurian ships were eradicated you asked them to return to the Illaria first. It's a journey you wanted to make together. One last trip.

It would have been fitting to take the pilot's seat, you suppose, as you did on so many of your adventurers. To be the one who flew them down to the surface. But you had to be here, where you can see the entire cabin laid out before you -- all your companions sitting at their stations. You wanted to watch them unobserved. Watch and think and remember.

Illaria's words whisper in your ear. The things she said that night, after the final meal. You and she were left alone with the remains of the feast, the bottle of scotch, your recollections, and your lives. There was a sheen in her eyes that you'd never seen there before, the soft glisten of inebriation. Alcohol and friendship had loosened her mind and tongue. Unaccustomed intoxication had bestowed upon her the nostalgic and philosophical state of mind so cherished by drinkers. Your conversation wandered like a drifting dreamer, until its phantom fingers flitted across a subject dear to both your hearts: your companions.

The Princess spoke of them as both friend and biographer, her words bearing what at the time seemed to be the misplaced solemnity of the tipsy intellectual. The eloquence of a trained orator and stateswoman flowed forth from her lips, in a manner which would have seemed laughable pomposity from anyone else yet from her carried a sweetness and charm that made you love her all the more.

And now... Now those ornate, verbose, drunken pronouncements shine in your mind like holy scripture -- rendered eternal and priceless by her passing.

Your gaze is slow, drifting, roaming. Perhaps your eyes can't quite bring themselves to hasten this moment. They wish to savor it, draw it out, stretch it into eternity. But nothing lasts forever.

First they alight on Talia. Her hands guide the ship with unconscious perfection, mastering the controls and the vessel. But her face holds none of the joy spaceflight and impending battle usually set there, not even the natural smile that seemed to forever lift the corners of her mouth. Determination, the thought of what's to come, has scoured it. Perhaps after this is all over the grimness will fall from her. You hope so. The universe shouldn't lose that smile.

"Talia's wild, unpredictable," the Princess says. "That's how she flies and how she fights. It's what makes her so amazing, so vibrant -- and a terror to our enemies. But for all that, her love and loyalty are as unshakable as mountains. What more could one ask for in a friend?"

Next your gaze rests on the young prince. The boy who attacked you on Gallea, protecting his planet from invaders. You remember how much he aggravated you on your first spaceflight, with his hyperactive enthusiasm, his barrage of questions. How could you ever have disliked him?

"Telemachus... He's seen things that no boy should ever see. Done things that... Well, maybe no one should ever do the things he's done with that chainsaw of his." She winces. Her mouth wrinkles in distaste at the gruesome memories. "He's suffered. Felt the sting of war and loss just like we have. It's made him strong, a fighter. Yet he can still laugh, still show the warmth and joy of a child's heart. I would be proud to have a son like him."

So would you. So would you...

He's sat at the gunner's station, facing the screen with unfocussed eyes. Little boyish hands play with the interface, twisting the sticks this way and that. You recognize those movements -- control combinations from one of his videogames. His mind is elsewhere. Perhaps in King Salastro's palace, embracing his father for the last time. Or else already on Sian, filled with the coming bloodshed.

You hope a brighter future awaits him after this war. A chance to be a boy again, instead of a warrior.

It's with both gentle amusement and a faint sigh that you look to Ragnar, and see the same expression on the Niflung's face. The smoldering eyes in his fierce visage are distant, aimed at the edge of his axe but seeing far beyond the brutal metal.

"What can you say about Ragnar? He's like a big, unstoppable, omnicidal teddy bear." She giggles. It's the most enchanting sound you've ever heard. "A lovable brute and a vicious killer rolled into one. A mercenary who wouldn't betray us for all the credits in the galaxy. If we can find some comfort in the conquest of Sian space and the attack on the Child of Heaven, it's that they caused us to meet such a friend."

What have those red eyes seen? How many deaths, most inflicted by his own savage hands? And yet there's a softness there too, something within teased forth by Illaria. Perhaps by all of you. Tender emotions twisted into melancholy, shoveled as fuel into the furnace of vengeance.

You know what lies before the Niflung. More violence. More killing. Until the day he dies or else drowns the universe in blood. If it makes him happy, so be it. You've felt enough misery to understand the supreme worth of joy. And there may be more for him besides. He'll still have the others, their warmth and friendship.

Last you look upon Lu Bu. His metal countenance is the most difficult to fathom. Nor do his movements betray the thoughts which spark within his computerized brain. He's examining his weapon attachments, ensuring their readiness for the coming bloodshed with his customary mechanical precision and grace. But you've known him long enough for empathy to transcend enigma.

A being created for a purpose, to serve as a gift from TALOS to the Emperor, and then rejected out of suspicion and prejudice. How that must have stung. But then fate made him your companion, placed him at Illaria's side.

"No one fortunate enough to call Lu Bu their friend could ever imagine that robots are mere machines. In speech and counsel, battle and honor, wisdom and loyalty, he's one of the greatest men I've ever known. He could outlive all of us, and our children, and their children. The Sian Empire might be blessed to have him as its advisor and champion for centuries. That thought brings me comfort."

The man he was made for is gone. So is the woman in whose service and friendship he found purpose. But there will always be a place for him in the Sian Empire. Wu Tenchu will see to that. And the rest of your companions won't desert him.

If the galaxy holds justice in its endless sweeping void and among its grand myriads of twinkling stars, Lu Bu will find his place. It may be that generations from now he'll tell your tale to those who look upon your life and deeds as history, long-ago events that shaped the destiny of their empire.

You wonder if you'll be remembered as a hero or a villain.

For the Empire

There's a saying you learned a long time ago, an anonymous gem of military science perhaps first uttered or written by a general whose identity perished well before his wisdom:

He who controls the void controls the air. He who controls the air controls the ground.

Its veracity is evident here.

With the Centurian fleet destroyed, the Sian Empire and its allies now have total space supremacy within the system. Its reaches, the great rolling blackness between its worlds, is yours to command. And in interstellar warfare nothing is everything, that emptiness the key to mastering the immense spheroids which spin through it.

Massive cruisers and squadrons of smaller ships stand vigil around the planet, patrol the surrounding space like victorious battalions marching through a city's streets in all their martial finery.

No reinforcements for the garrisons on Sian. No one to save them.

The Silver Shadow descends into the atmosphere, centuries of technological advancement making a mockery of elemental fire and fury. Once again the atmosphere of Sian embraces it -- not as a trespasser this time, sneaking into the world shrouded in its cloak of invisibility. This time it comes as part of a glorious liberation force, one amid many, gleaming and proud in the sunlight.

Air supremacy has already been established. It was inevitable. With the planet's orbit in your power, it was a small matter to deploy waves of fighters into its airspace -- supported by the mighty aerial bulk of larger vessels. Now gleaming squadrons fly across the sky, each flash of their wings a cry of defiance to your enemies. But there's no one to challenge them, at least not here in Lanjin Cheng. Those aircraft which haven't yet been eradicated soon will be. These skies are yours.

Only the ground remains unconquered.

There too the Centurians are hard-pressed. Columns of armor and towering mechs make splendid targets for airstrikes. But when one wishes to liberate instead of destroy, to save a planet and its cities rather than ravage them, mass ordinance bombings are out of the question. Thus much of their infantry fights on, and the battle will be settled in the way man has fought for millennia: face to face in the streets and buildings.

There's no subterfuge this time as Talia touches down on the palace's private landing pad. It's yours now, as it should be. When the exit hatch opens, it reveals dozens of Sian soldiers and TALOS Battle Bots, bands of warriors standing guard at its edges alongside armored vehicles and turrets. Innumerable salutes greet your first step onto the tarmac.

A man and woman in ornate armor jog towards you, the green, blue, purple, and red oriental dragons on their uniforms writhing and snapping across the white plates in time with their movements. Sian generals in battle attire. Even the highest ranking officers want to be on the ground for this mission.

They come to a halt in front of the ship just as Telemachus' mech stomps onto the tarmac, joining the others beside you. Both salute, though the gestures are swift and perfunctory. They're here to fight, not waste time with pleasantries or formalities. That suits you just fine.

"The Centurians still hold the palace," the woman says. "But we've had word that they're emerging to give battle."

"They must have found their spines," the man adds.

You nod, though you know it's not true. The Centurians may be many things, but their shock troops aren't cowards. They have to know their time is up, and they want to go out fighting. You're ready to oblige them.

"One of the vehicles-" the woman begins, gesturing to a nearby troop carrier.

"Don't bother," you say.

You turn to your companions -- the gunslinger and prince, warrior robot and Niflung killing-machine.

"Come."

Then you run.

Across the landing pad, past the cordon of troops -- who shout and cheer, filling the air with exhortations that redouble the fury burning in your breast. Your boots barely seem to touch the ground. It's as if even gravity is waving you through, softening its binding bonds. Perhaps the world itself is launching you, urging you, compelling you.

There's a stretch of wide road beyond the landing pad. On the right it runs alongside the palace wall, and will take you to its front entrance. There it's clear, kept sacrosanct for your passage. But on the left there's clamor and commotion. It's filled with throngs of civilians that seethe and surge against the line of soldiers who hold them back, trying to maintain order and keep them away from the fray. One of the uniformed men sees you, and yells.

"The Jian! Lady/Lord [Player Name]!"

The cry ripples through the crowd. It becomes a chant, a shout, a torrent.

First one of the soldiers comes. Then another. Then another -- breaking away from their stations, their assigned duty crumbling in the swell of warrior spirit. Civilians plough through the gaps, eager to follow. The rest of the guards soon realize that there's no use remaining. They join the clamor, lend their voices, join the mass of Sian humanity.

As you and your companions run down the road, towards the battle, hundreds of men and women run behind you -- crying your name, crying her name, the Emperor's name, screaming for fallen loved ones and hurling abuse at your enemies.

It's as though the whole city is running, the whole planet, the system, the empire. All of them rushing to victory and destiny, the final blow that will hurl the Centurians' tentacles from this world and return Sian to their hands.

Talia is at your side, her swift legs and springing pace matching yours. So are Lu Bu and Ragnar, the robot's mechanical frame and the cybernetic war machine the Niflung calls his body tireless. Telemachus' mech keeps pace as well, its thrusters silent instead of launching him at speed. The five of you run together, the waves of soldiers and civilians behind you, destiny and destruction ahead.

When you reach the fighting, enter the vast square in front of the palace, it's as though you've been thrust into an ancient epic, hurled into the The Iliad's hexameters or The Romance of the Three Kingdoms' pages. Everywhere you turn you see one of your allies, using the skills which brought them into your ranks, proving their worth through raw violence.

M.1 C.H.U., the misandrous cyborg, sashays towards the nearest Centurian troopers, her curves swaying with the sinister seductiveness of the femme fatale. The big blaster in her hands fires, spitting three bolts of purple energy at three different targets -- straight into each man's groin. They scream and collapse, armor and genitals melted into a mass of metal and anguish.

Tech-Fist, the scientist superhero, appears in the shifting fray. The turquoise gauntlet that encases his hand, the eponymous weapon fashioned by a mind both genius and juvenile, swings through the air in a sweeping backhand. It crashes against a Centurian's helmet, denting the metal and sending him spinning.

There's a spray of sub-machinegun fire, a burst of bullets that all cluster around an enemy's heart instead of spitting indiscriminate paths into the whirling melee of allies and enemies. Blitz, the guerilla commander that the Collective calls a terrorist and others call a freedom fighter... Even she's come out of the shadows, abandoning subtlety and sabotage, covert bombings and tactical strikes to be here.

Xiang Kua, the psychic kung fu expert, appears above the battle for a moment -- rising above the mass of warriors, his legs spinning, boots glowing with psionic energy as they kick a Centurian further and further into the air. When they reach the apex of the maneuver the Sian martial artist slips into a graceful backflip that takes him back down towards the chaos. The Centurian drops like a stone.

Nearby a hulking metal form towers head and shoulders above a group of Centurian troopers, laying into them with big swinging blows of his huge fists -- scattering them left and right. Ajax... You first heard his name in reports decrying intelligent robots, heated arguments about how such automatons were dangerous and violent. TALOS' creation is proving them right today, and they can go to hell.

All these scenes slip into your perception in an instant, along with a dozen other aristeias -- catalogues of heroism and carnage glaring at you from all sides. Then you draw your jian with one hand, pull your pistol from its holster with the other, and charge.

Nothing is Over

Your friends fight as you've never seen them fight before. In sight of the imperial palace, on the cusp of freeing Princess Illaria's homeworld from the Centurian Collective, love and hatred meld together -- seeping deep into your marrow and exhorting you all. The sights and sounds of the grand melee raging before you have their effect as well. Hundreds of little acts of courage meet your gaze. Hardened veterans and poorly armed civilians stand together to battle those who once came and conquered but now can only delay the inevitable.

Ragnar leaps into the air, launched heavenward by the inconceivable might of his thews and the augmented strength of his skeleton. His axe is raised aloft, high above his head -- as though offered up to whatever gods of war and bloodshed may deign to fasten immortal eyes upon this clash. Light gleams along its orange edge, like a sprawling sunrise gathered and focused into one shining brilliance.

His bellowing war cry sounds out over the shouts of enemy and ally, the screams of friend and foe, the susurration of lasers and the clanging of metal against metal.

Then the axe falls, cleaving down as his muscular body descends, arcing its burning path into the trooper below. It takes the Centurian in the side of the neck, slicing through thick armor plates with the softest screech. And it doesn't stop there. It cuts through metal and flesh and bone and life. When it's done, the Centurian slides apart with a squelch and a grind -- his body sundered and his soul cast into the void for whatever judgment awaits it.

Crimson erupts, a fountain that gushes over the Niflung and paints him with the sticky wet glory of his kill. He laughs, and plunges deeper into the fray.

Telemachus is beside him in the next moment, his mech's redness matching the Niflung's. Not all of it is paint. The engine of war, built by TALOS at the behest of a loving and indulgent father, echoes the fury of the boy who pilots it.

The laser-edged chainsaw flashes like a sliver of cyan sky, the heavens concentrated into a single whirling strip of energy and portent. It's the wrath of Zeus, the thunderbolt of Jove, the combined edicts of every sky-god ever conceived by the minds of man. It chops and slashes, thrusts and cleaves.

Armored limbs fly into the air as though grasping for escape and salvation. Heads topple and tumble. Torsos fall one way, legs another. When it comes to slaughter, the prince is already a king.

Lu Bu walks a different path.

The golden robot could cause as much carnage with his sword and his claw. You've seen him wield those weapons in a cyclone of steel, lay waste to dozens of enemies with such swiftness that most wouldn't even have comprehended the doom which took them. But he doesn't throw himself into the heart of the battle with reckless abandon, doesn't merely go where he could unleash his mechanical might without restraint.

Instead he turns his gaze and his strength elsewhere.

Men and women in civilian garb, armed with whatever weapons they've brought from their homes or snatched up from the ground, are struggling with a band of Centurians -- hurling themselves into the fray with fierce determination that would soon have become martyrdom against the superior arms and armor of their foes. Would have, but for Lu Bu.

He slips into their midst, and slips his sword into the first soldier's heart.

Defender and champion of the empire, he takes his stand with its people, shining in their midst. She would have been so proud.

Talia is still by your side, her pistols zapping their perfection. No shot is wasted. No laser, even those fired at targets in the middle of the chaotic melee, fails to find a deserving eye or heart.

When you move into the battle she spins round, her back pressed against yours for a split-second before she completes the movement, ends up on the other side, and keeps firing.

Your jian cuts and thrusts, each strike taking a life or else ensuring an enemy's imminent demise -- beating away a weapon, blocking a blast with its sheathe of energy, amputating a hand or arm which its owner presumed to raise against you.

The gunslinger is silent. Her pistols talk for her, speak her rage and vengeance, spit her curses and profanities. When you press deeper into the melee, making for a pocket of Centurions where the fighting is thickest, she presses on with you -- firing at pointblank range.

Attacks are coming at you from each angle now, save for that which Talia holds and protects. But your blade answers each of them, and its word is final. As for her... You hazard a glance, and see that she needs no assistance. Her arms move around her body, firing in each direction. Whenever an enemy draws near, one of her weapons points over her shoulder or around her waist and puts an end to them.

Her reflexes, her senses, are on the verge of precognition. She's the goddess of gunslingers, and no one can escape the pull of her triggers.

Blood. Death. Screams. Shouts.

You lose yourself in the battle, disappear into its violent depths. It's only when the cheering begins, when you blink and find yourself on the steps of the palace, that you know it's over.

There are no more cries of pain, only joy. Elation. Victory.

This will be the last speech you'll give as Imperial Jian. The one history will remember, for good or ill.

Talia and Telemachus, Ragnar and Lu Bu flank you -- the five of you gazing down the broad stairway and the strip of defaced sculptures which bisects its length. Wu Tenchu stands a little distance away, within the pool of shadow cast by one of the portico's pillars. The faintest of smiles twitches at the corners of your mouth. You'll bring him into the light soon enough.

The square in front of the palace is thronged, filled with triumphant warriors. A handful even intrude onto the lower reaches of the steps themselves, as though yearning to be as close as possible to the Imperial Jian yet held at bay as propriety struggles with enthusiasm.

Some are wounded, their clothes red with their own blood as well as that of friends and foes. But they refuse to leave -- forcing the medics to attend them while they stand and stare and wait. Waiting for the words which will fall from your lips.

You glance over at Master Wu, at the shadowy face of the mandarin. For all his genius, all the inscrutable machinations of his cunning brain, even he doesn't know the full extent of your plans...

Nor do your companions. You hope that in the end they'll forgive you...

Scorched Earth

First you offer praise. You speak of courage, valor, audacity -- lauding the efforts of all who've lifted weapons since the war began, both imperial subjects fighting for their own freedom and allies whose loyalty and friendship have been tested and not found wanting.

You speak too of all the billions of subjects who endured the Centurian occupation, yearning for liberation and doing what little they could to bring it about by passing information or aiding bands of rebels.

Then you turn your words and mind to all those who perished. The warriors and civilians who never lived to see this day, who closed their eyes for the final time not knowing if the Collective would ever be defeated. Heads nod in the crowd, or else are bowed in prayer or remembrance. They've all lost someone. No heart is untouched by the conflict's grief. It's here that you speak of the Emperor and the Princess. These words aren't carefully crafted like those you delivered at the funeral. They're genuine, and bite into your soul as they fall from your lips.

But it isn't yet time to surrender to melancholy.

So your words turn once more. You talk of all the planets that still chafe under Centurian domination -- noble worlds such as Gallea where King Salastro gave his life so that Illaria and his son could escape the Centurians. You ask how you can allow such injustice to continue, how people who have known the weight of the Collective's yoke can permit others to tremble beneath it.

Then the critical moment comes. Two words, that will shape the destiny of human space: Alpha Centauri.

The Centurians have been driven from Sian space. But that's not enough. They conquered your worlds, brought war and carnage to the streets of your settlements. And now they get to cower from you in the unviolated sanctuary of their own territory?

No.

Your mandate as Imperial Jian may have been only to free the Sian Empire. But you can't relinquish your power yet. Not whilst the Collective still exists, while Councilor Dule still draws breath.

You tell them this, and the people below need no encouragement. They call out for war, for vengeance, for death and destruction. Sian subjects yearn to strike and punish, to exact righteous retribution. As for your allies, you've made your arrangements there. Some are as keen as you to see the Centurians destroyed. Others care only for what they might gain from the conquest of Collective space. No matter. All is grist that comes to your mill.

It's at the apex of this clamor that you turn to Master Wu, and name him Prime Minister of the Sian Empire -- declaring that someone must be left to administer to the newly freed worlds while you wage war in the far-off system where Dule lurks.

The mandarin is startled. A rare thing for him. But what can he do? Before the eyes of the galaxy, with Sian subjects looking on and cheering your edict, he can only glide towards you, bow, and accept the honor -- even as his eyes flash unspoken questions at you.

Wu Tenchu isn't the only one thrown into confusion when you announce your plans.

"But..." Telemachus' widening eyes make him look so young... "I thought we were all going to Alpha Centauri!"

"What Lady/Lord [Player Name] proposes makes sense," Wu Tenchu replies. "Once Alpha Centauri is attacked, the Centurians may try to retaliate by massacring the populations of the worlds they still occupy. It's wise to ensure their safety before that can happen."

You drop to one knee in front of the boy, place your hands on his shoulders.

"I know you want Dule. We all do. But Gallea is your world. Those are your people... your subjects. They need you. It's what your father would have wanted."

That one hurt. Invoking King Salastro's memory to manipulate him. But you have to...

Telemachus nods.

"You're right. I'll cut them to bits and chuck them out of his palace."

You put your arms around him. He tenses at first, taken aback. But he allows you to pull him close to you, returns the gesture with bemused arms.

"You'll make a fine king," you say.

You kiss his forehead as you pull away.

Stupid... He'll know something's wrong. They all will. Shouldn't have done that, shouldn't have made a big deal out of this parting... But words weren't enough.

You turn to Talia and Lu Bu as you stand up. There's a curious expression on the gunslinger's face.

"Look after him," you say. "Make sure he gets through the battle in one piece."

The gunslinger nods. Then she steps forward and hugs you, surprising you just like you surprised Telemachus. Her lips touch your cheek -- a soft, almost ethereal kiss.

Her eyes hold yours for a long moment after she steps back. Then she turns away.

"I won't let him come to any harm," Lu Bu says. He drops into an elegant, courtly bow.

"Thank you." You return the gesture.

"It's been an honor to fight at your side." He pauses. "Today."

"And at yours."

"A moment, Lord Commander?"

You look round, into the face of the female general who met you on this pad when you first landed.

"We need to confirm some of your arrangements," she continues.

She gestures for you to accompany her. As you turn to follow, you see Wu Tenchu moving closer to the others. You strain to hear the words behind you, but the general is talking. You can only hope that their suspicions aren't enough to make them interfere...

You're led to a group of senior commanders near one of the shuttles -- the craft which will take them up to their command ship. They salute, then ask you a series of questions concerning your orders. You try to suppress the frown which gathers at your brow. Weren't your instructions clear enough?

But you answer until at last they're satisfied, salute once more, and board their shuttle. Then you jog back to where you left your companions.

To your relief, only Ragnar remains. The others must be on the Silver Shadow already, getting ready for their own trip to a command vessel. The mandarin is gone too, perhaps already dealing with the innumerable issues of state you've dumped into his lap.

Then you notice that the shuttle you were to fly to the Illaria is gone as well.

"They took that one instead," the Niflung explains. "Said we should keep the Silver Shadow with us, in case we needed it in Alpha Centauri."

"Oh..."

You board the ship, wondering if confusion is contagious.

Ragnar drops into the co-pilot's seat when you take your position.

"I'm not stupid," he says.

You don't answer.

"I know why you only wanted me with you," he continues. "Whatever you're going to do, you think they'd try to stop you. But you know I won't."

"Guess eating that Snuuth's brains paid off after all."

He grins. Then you fly up to the Illaria in silence.

"You have a transmission, Lord Commander."

Captain Silea tells you this the moment you step onto the bridge. She opens her mouth as though to add something, then hesitates. She doesn't even remember to salute.

"Is something wrong?"

"It's Francois Dupont. He's demanding to speak with you."

Dupont... The Secretary-General of the Union of Human Worlds.

"Put it through to the war room."

"Yes, Lord Commander."

You pass into the chamber. Ragnar follows. You seal the door behind him, then sit down in the command seat.

If the Niflung cares about the lack of furniture, he gives no sign. He stands beside your chair and looks up at the big screen as Francois Dupont's face appears there.

The Secretary-General of the UHW is barely recognizable at first. His hair is puffy and disheveled. It's as though someone's detonated a bomb in the middle of its customary voluminous neatness, and scattered it in all directions. His bushy moustache is equally disheveled -- you'd never imagined that particular word applying to a moustache, but apparently it can. There's a burgundy dressing gown around his thin frame, and he looks to be in a rather modest office instead of the ornate chamber he commands at the UHW HQ.

"Lady/Lord [Player Name]," he begins, in his high and fruity voice, "I've received word from Councilor Dule of the Centurian Collective."

Ah... So that's what's dragged a man like him out of bed.

"What did that bastard want?"

Dupont gives a little humph at your description of Dule.

"The councilor has called upon me to mediate. He wishes to avoid further loss of life, and to that end he agrees to withdraw from all occupied territories, rejoin the UHW, and abide by our rulings."

Ragnar laughs. You smile without mirth.

"His terms aren't accepted. Tell him to expect us soon."

"No!" The secretary-general's eyes flash. His moustache dances with the force of the exhalation. "Lady/Lord [Player Name], in the name of the UHW I order you to stand your forces down. There will be no attack on Centurian space. Such an act will be regarded as illegal military aggression, and bring down the full sanction of-"

"Should have killed him when we were on Earth," Ragnar growls.

You lift your right hand, ready to swat the screen away as you would a buzzing fly, and break the connection.

"Wait! If you refuse, I'll contact each member power and demand that they withdraw their support! You'll be left without a single human ally!"

Your hand hovers in mid-air, your mind rushing through the possible outcomes -- making rapid calculations. Some of your allies might ignore Dupont, but others...

The secretary-general nods, taking his cue from your indecision.

"I'm glad you're willing to listen to reason. Now, I'll-"

Then his eyes glaze over and he topples forward. His puffy-haired head taps against the monitor before slumping onto the desk with a soft thud.

The air behind him shimmers. A debonair smile appears from nothingness, followed by the rest of Arthur Lupin.

"Good luck, my dear."

He reaches out towards the monitor. The image vanishes.

"Captain Silea," you say, opening another channel, "alert the rest of the fleet. Tell them it's time."

"Yes, Lord Commander."

And there it is.

It was the first thing you looked for when the Illaria completed its hyperspace jump, just like when you emerged into your native system to fight for Sian. Before you even looked at the Centurian fleet, you scanned the monitors for a sign.

This time you see one.

An empty portion of the void, away from the great space stations and immense ships on which the denizens of this wordless system dwell. You enlarge that screen, drawing it out until it seems to dominate the entire chamber -- a looming square of blackness that might fall at any moment and swallow you up.

You have to be sure...

But there's no mistake. There's the shimmer, just like on the Zenith.

As your gaze sweeps the chamber, something catches the corner of your eye, some faint trace of movement. But when you look again, it's gone. A trick of the light...

It's almost imperceptible. You'd never have noticed it if you hadn't been looking for it. Waiting. Anticipating. Preparing.

Why here? That's the thought which fills your mind. Why here and not before, when you fought the Centurians in Sian space? More indecision perhaps. Are they wondering whether it's worth their time to support Dule any longer? Is there a debate raging even now, some voices speaking in favor of aiding the Collective and others calling for them to be cut loose? You'll never know. But that doesn't matter.

You reach for the controls, and open a channel.

"I know you can hear me."

There's no reply. No screen opens to reveal a listener. But they hear your words. You're sure of it.

"Watch," you say.

Your fingers dart across the keys of a terminal. Two fresh screens come into being amidst the holographic mosaic, pushing their way to prominence. They stand side-by-side, below the empty view of space with its strange shimmer. Two big squares, each displaying a large, dense, heavily industrialized settlement. Two of the Centurians' most valuable, most productive worlds.

A few gestures and information is hurled along the channel, flung at your mute listeners. You share the images, give them the planets' coordinates. Perhaps they have their own way of seeing, of identifying, of verifying. But if not, they can borrow your eyes. You don't want them to miss this.

A soft growl escapes Ragnar's throat. Does he know what you're about to do? Has he worked it out?

If he has, he makes no move to stop you.

Your hand reaches towards the special control. The contingency plan.

Genocide is Painless

"What would she say? About what you're planning?"

The explosions are like the booming voices of angry gods, the mushroom clouds gigantic burial shrouds.

Fire. Inconceivable expanses of fire. A bombardment worthy of heaven and hell, of Armageddon. Destruction so utter it seems as though it must ravage the entire universe.

Cities die. Worlds die. Annihilation. A nuclear onslaught that obliterates flesh and metal with callous equanimity.

Valuable worlds, precious resources... Gone.

"I'll burn it all before I let you have it," you say. "Remember that."

Your eyes fix upon the blank square of space. The shimmer vanishes as the Besalaad ships withdraw.

Imperialists, not ravagers. Ruined worlds are worth nothing to them.

Some of the holographic screens are bleeping. People wish to speak with you. But you're not interested in talking.

Instead you widen a different screen. Your battle view. It's time to begin...

The Centurians put up a good fight. But they're outmatched. They committed too many of their defense ships in the battle for Sian. And now they're faced with even larger forces, a vast armada of your allies who've converged on Alpha Centauri whilst smaller fleets strike to liberate the remaining occupied planets.

Captain Silea does admirably, more than a match for her Collective counterparts in this theater, under these circumstances.

So you only deploy your war room's special control mechanisms near the end...

"They know they're beaten!" she says. "Their stations and settlement ships are deploying their escape pods."

Yes... They're on the screens -- spherical objects thrown into the void, tossed away from the space stations and gargantuan craft like bombs from a drunken grenadier's hands. They tumble into the darkness before emitting jolts of energy from their thrusters, arresting their descent and flying away from their neglectful parents. Clutches of ambulatory eggs making a desperate migration.

"Lord Commander? You've taken direct control of the ship again?"

You grasp the flight sticks. Your thumbs rest upon the red buttons.

Councilor Dule

"Those are civilian escape pods! They're unarmed! Non-combatants!"

Silea's professional reserve is gone now. Her voice is shrill, that of a horrified girl instead of a warrior.

Another sphere explodes, popped like a bubble beneath your sapphire blasts.

Someone's banging on the war room's door. But they won't get through it.

More bleeps from the holographic screens. A curt gesture silences them. Then more blasts, more cracked eggs. More Centurians scattered onto the tides of oblivion.

You're not the only one firing. Others have joined in. Some of your allies, those with the greatest grudges against the Collective or else simply the most bloodthirsty. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that the Centurians learn the true cost of what they've done.

Captain Silea's voice falls silent. She knows it's no good. She can't stop you.

You pity her. Not the thousands upon thousands who are dying in those ruptured eggs. But you feel pity for her.

"Captain, the logs will show that you had nothing to do with this. I accept full responsibility. No one will blame you."

She doesn't answer.

The last of the escape pods burns. Everything burns. Well, not quite everything. Not yet...

You get up and turn to Ragnar.

"If any of them try to stop us, don't do any damage that can't be fixed."

"Got it," he growls.

You activate the security panel beside the door. It slides open.

The crew on the bridge are in their seats. None of them look round. The two of you walk to the exit surrounded by silence.

A few people pass you on the way to the hangar. Some avert their gaze. Others favor you with approving nods, satisfied vengeance in their eyes.

Most of the ships have already been launched, either at the onset of the battle or to join the boarding operation. But the Silver Shadow still rests in its place, ready to take you to Centauri Prime -- their main space station, home of the Centurian High Council.

You don't make for the argentine craft, however. Instead you head for one of the storage bays.

"What're you doing?" Ragnar asks.

"You'll see."

The door opens, revealing a darkened room full of crates, great masses of them piled from floor to ceiling. It resembles a cityscape.

"It's time," you say.

"Finally!"

The voice comes from the back of the room, the speaker hidden from sight. There's a whumping of heavy machinery, the sound of weighty metal footsteps thumping against the floor -- drawing closer and closer.

Something that resembles a robot emerges from behind one of the stacks, a hefty machine encased in thick metal plates.

A panel in its midsection slides open, revealing a jar full of liquid that contains a severed head.

Ragnar snarls. He strides forward, raising his axe. You move in the way, press your hand against one of the slabs of muscle on his chest.

"Don't worry, Niflung," Rautha sneers. "You won't have to kill me again."

"He's coming with us," you say.

Your omnicidal friend stares at Rautha for a long moment. Then he grunts.

"Hope you know what you're doing," he says. Then he turns around and walks back into the hangar.

You follow, Rautha clanking along behind you. Three people, two friends and a former enemy, board the Silver Shadow with murder on their minds.

"Trust me," Rautha says. "I've been here before. This is the best landing place, if you want Dule before anyone else gets to him."

He's already moving when you and Ragnar step off the ship, towards the small hangar's exit and into the steel-grey corridor beyond. You jog to keep up.

There are hundreds of separate forces moving through Centauri Prime. Sian troops, TALOS robots, and divisions of warriors from each of your allies. Everyone wants to be here at the end, be part of the force that stormed the Centurian capital. Some will adhere to your instructions, that Dule be left for you. But you know that others won't. Even imperial troops may stray, filled with bloodlust, yearning to be the one to avenge the Emperor and Illaria. As for the others... The Niflung berserkers and other savage warriors would tear him limb from limb -- and then offer you a trophy from the corpse by way of an apology.

So you allowed Rautha to guide the Silver Shadow with his knowledge of Centauri Prime, to an insignificant looking hangar in a seemingly inconsequential section of the station.

Now the three of you pass down stark, metal-paneled corridors -- adorned by nothing but the occasional Centurian emblem. Only the distant sounds of battle prove that you aren't alone in this drab, artless realm.

"We're missing the killing," Ragnar growls. "Someone else might-"

But the end of his sentence becomes a roar of satisfaction. The din of booted feet, from one of the side passages.

"Heh. He knows we're coming," Rautha says. "He's called in reinforcements."

"Let them come." Ragnar lifts his machinegun in one hand, his axe in the other.

Troopers in iron-colored armor, as drab as the world around them, pour into the passage. Into the meat grinder.

The Niflung's bullets tear the first three, a barrage of fire that rips into their bodies -- expensive tips penetrating armor plates as though they were paper, brightening their uniforms with splashes of crimson. Then come the detonations. Explosive bullets... Only the best for this mission, to usher the Centurians off the galactic stage.

More follow, men and women brave or desperate enough to throw themselves forward even as they see their comrades eviscerated before their eyes. Their lasers, as red as the blood and gore, flash. But your life's been full of red lasers. These are no different. You throw yourself aside and fire back, putting a blast through a woman's head and putting her brains on the wall behind. More color... Interior decoration, a gift from the Sian Empire.

You sensed you could trust Rautha. Now he proves it.

The big guns at the ends of his mechanical arms open up, roaring murder -- lending their voice to Ragnar's weapon until the two seem like violent baritones singing an opera. The kind where everyone dies at the end.

But the former commander, the man who should by all rights have perished long ago, who urinates in the face of death by the very fact of his continued existence, isn't satisfied with that.

Missiles fly from his batteries, spiral through the air, and find new homes in the last of the Centurians. Scraps of metal and chunks of flesh rain across the passage.

He's moving before all the pieces hit the floor, heading for the door at the far end of the hall. But he stops when he comes to the corridor that delivered the troopers to their deaths. More footfalls. Louder this time. The sounds of a bigger squad.

Laser fire zaps across his chest and shoulders, red lances scratching at his new body's bulk.

"Keep going," he shouts, his voice blending with the rattle of gunfire spitting from his arms. "When you get to hell, tell me how you killed him!"

You and Ragnar run past, slipping by the laser fire. A glance shows you a huge force of iron-grey soldiers at the other end of the side passage.

"Rautha's back, bitches!"

With that cry, and a stream of manic laughter, he charges -- guns blazing, missiles flying. The cacophony of carnage follows you through the door, and the next one, before distance and sliding metal barriers conceal it from your ears.

You're in a small antechamber -- a closed door ahead of you, an unsealed corridor to your right.

The barrel of your weapon takes aim out of instinct when metal forms appear at the other end, then relaxes a split-second later. TALOS Battle Bots. So the other boarding parties have found their way here already. Good. They'll be in time to see him die.

The door doesn't retract when you approach it. One stubborn little barrier that thinks it can keep you from your goal. Not a chance...

Ragnar kicks it. The door becomes a doormat.

And there he is, at the other end of the cavernous room -- surrounded on three sides by huge windows that gaze out into the void, at the countless stars he dreamed of grasping. There are tables behind him, crowned with holographic projections of planets and systems, ships and weapons.

Dule's personal war room. The place he's chosen to make his last stand.

The glass which covers the mech's cockpit is opaque, its occupant hidden beneath its reflective sheen. But you know it's him all the same, encased in the heavy metal chassis atop chicken-walker legs, arms and shoulders bristling with weaponry.

All this passes into your eyes and mind in an instant. Then the shooting starts.

In your imagination, your dreams, your fantasies, there were words. Dule would taunt you, challenge you, mock you. And you'd spit your own words in his face before you took his life.

But here, encircled by the void, beneath the gaze and judgment of the stars, there's only shooting.

The cylindrical cannons at the ends of the mech's arms spin, showering clumsy bursts of bullets across the room. Some plink against the floor, shoot upwards again in chaotic ricochets. Others patter against the wall behind you. A few rebounding rounds graze your armor as you roll and evade, scratching scars across the metal. But it'll take more than that to stop you.

It's been a long time since Councilor Dule took the field, decades since he piloted that mech -- an old model, precursor to the Sentinel -- in combat. He's not a fighter. Not anymore. Not like you and Ragnar...

The Niflung and his machinegun both roar. Little explosions erupt across the mech's grey-green plates, scouring and smashing. Bursts of incendiary rage plume across one of the big bullet-spitting arms, at first blending with the muzzle flash but then swallowing it up. The mounted weapon stops spinning.

Your blasts take the other one, a series of precise shots at the gaping barrel that melt its metal and seal its mouths.

Missiles whoosh from the mech's shoulder launcher, red tips spinning across the room, leaving artful trails of smoke behind them. Two land near Ragnar, explode with enough force to throw his tank-like body through the air. But he lands on his feet, and keeps firing as if nothing had happened.

Three swirl their way towards you. But they're inaccurate little things. You've dodged worse than them before. One you shoot in mid-air, the others explode close to where you were -- far from where you are.

No... The councilor has nothing. His defiance is meaningless, delaying the inevitable. The stars in their courses are set against him. Perhaps they wish to avenge her too, want to witness his destruction and illuminate the moment with their astral light.

You and Ragnar both aim at the shoulder-mounted launcher. You don't know whether it's your weapon or the Niflung's which strikes the critical blow. It doesn't matter. Another mouth silenced. Another nail in the coffin.

It's time.

You throw your weapons aside.

"Kasan."

The burning comes faster this time. Blood becomes fire, an inferno blazing its way through your body -- immolating your innards, devouring meat and soul until there's only flame.

So does the darkness. Black tendrils writhe and thrash at the edges of your vision, the periphery of the universe. They're reaching for you, yearning for you. As hungry as the fire. Both want you. Both can have you. But not yet...

"Kasan!"

Blood and darkness respond to the ancient word, woven through the fabric of time -- carried deep in your essence, in the intangible, existential matter of which DNA is but the faintest echo.

Images flood your consciousness as you run, sharpening and blurring with each burning beat of blood. Visions from places both forgotten and half-remembered. They swirl around your perception, like the darkness -- the two melding together, twisting and morphing into something darker than the abyss and brighter than a sun.

There are sounds as well, an ocean of noise -- millions of voices that drown one another in their eagerness to be heard. They echo inside your head, little slivers escaping onto the cusp of intelligibility before falling into the endless waves once more.

Unfathomable forces tug at you, yank you this way and that. Pull you, push you, batter you, throw you, seize you. They're trying to take you, consume you, digest you into millennia of seething, bubbling, bursting history. That's where you belong, in the incandescent ocean. One voice amongst the others, straining to be heard but thwarted each time by the enormity of creation.

In the middle of all this is the single point of reality in the maelstrom, the fragment of solidity that's more important than the universe of surreality which threatens to obscure it. Dule's mech. The laser on its right shoulder, sibling of the ruined launcher, is firing its yellow beam.

You raise a glowing hand to meet it.

The ocean smashes against you, sweeps you away, knocks sensation from your mind. Dancing colors, swirling existences. They fall together, coalesce into something white. Her. Illaria. She's standing in the middle of the tempest, surrounded by infinity. And she's screaming. Screaming as the fist smashes into her face, obliterates her skull. Redness.

There's something hard beneath your hands and your knees. Focus on that, on the solid, real, tangible thing. The floor. It's the floor. You've fallen, knocked down by the blood and the darkness and the light and the sound and-

Ragnar's voice and his machinegun's voice cry out, distant sounds that force their way into your brain.

You look up, see them explode across the mech's grey-green body. The laser dies. The cockpit's armored glass chips then cracks then shatters. And there he is. Councilor Dule, his face opened by the scattered shards -- blood splashed across his scarred, burned cheek and his grey hair.

"No!"

You think the voice is yours, though it's hard to tell, impossible to pick it out from the millions and millions. But the Niflung must hear it, must understand. Because no more bullets fly, no explosive round obliterates the councilor.

He's yours. Yours. And hers.

You're standing now. You're running. The blood's rushing throughout your body, quenching the flames or feeding it. The darkness is grabbing or guiding you.

Dule shouts. His weapons are gone. The mech staggers backwards. Then one of its legs gives way and it falls. Broken. Everything's broken. It, you, him, the universe. Breaking more each time. Every time your blood sings.

He's crawling from the cockpit, cutting himself on the thick glass teeth, shredding his hands. You yank him out, throw him onto the floor.

He looks up at you. His face is bloody, but his eyes are sharp. Focused. Frightened. The darkness is spinning around him. The blood is still raging and surging. Everything's a blur, except for those sharp, focused, frightened eyes.

"Kasan!"

A million voices cry out at the same time. Some understand the word, others don't. But all sense its magnitude, its importance.

Both your hands glow. The blood and the darkness grab you. They have you now. Forever.

Your hands plunge towards him. Glowing fingers pierce his skin, shred his muscle, push apart his ribs, grab soft lumps of flesh.

He screams. You scream. Illaria screams.

You pull, yanking your fists out of his carcass, splintering his ribcage, spraying his blood, casting his organs into the air.

Redness. Then darkness.

You did what you had to.

You try to cling to that thought as you gaze around the bare walls of your cell, at the blue energy barrier stretching beyond its slender bars. It provides little comfort.

Again and again the scene plays across your mind. You feel your thumb pressing the red buttons at the ends of the control sticks, see the Centurian escape pods exploding -- flashes of brilliant fire against the black of the void. The sounds of their destruction, spawned within your aural implant, rage in your ears like an accusation.

"[Player Name]!"

That voice... From the corridor.

The energy field is gone.

"[Player Name]!"

She appears at the bars, her white dress shimmering. Joy and relief flow across her beautiful face. Princess Illaria...

"We have to go! I've got the key!"

There's a click. The bars slide away, retracting into the floor and ceiling.

She takes your arm, pulls you into the corridor, into her embrace. The universe spins around you, swirling galaxies dancing to the tune of her presence.

Her lips brush against your ear as she whispers:

"Kasan."

Your eyes open.

There's a moment of confusion so utter that it might never end. Then the world resolves itself into intelligibility.

You're in your cabin on the Silver Shadow.

Memories coalesce, gathering and hardening. Centauri Prime...

You slide your legs off the bed. There's a moment's soreness when you stand, but it passes as though it were a phantom -- aches and pains remembered by your mind but forgotten by your body.

You're not wearing your armor anymore. And your hands...

For several seconds you just stare at them. No redness. But you can still feel Dule's organs in their grasp, torn from his ribcage -- his innards flung aloft like an offering to the void.

You head for the flight cabin.

It's empty.

The autopilot is engaged. So is the cloaking device.

A green light blinks at you from the communications terminal. A recorded message? You press the button.

Ragnar's face appears on the monitor. He's sitting...

You glance at the pilot's chair, as though the burly Niflung might have materialized there.

"I don't know how long you'll be out," he says. "I got the medical drones to check you over when they cleaned you up. They said you'll be fine."

There's a long pause. The Niflung sighs.

"I need to get you out of here. You have to disappear, at least for now. After what you did..." Another pause. "I'll hitch a ride off this station, and tell the others you're okay."

He gets up from the chair, moves away from the camera -- towards the edge of the screen. Then he stops, turns round, and comes back.

"If you need me, just call."

He reaches out. The recording ends.

For several seconds you stare at the blank screen, as though its black depths might hold some spark of knowledge, some shred of wisdom to help you make sense of it all. You thought the blood would take you, that your existence would end with Dule's. Yet here you are...

If the blackness on the monitor knows what to make of this, it betrays no sign. So you sit in the pilot's chair, examine the terminals. The autopilot... No destination set. Not even he knows where you are. Good.

He was right. You have to disappear. If you went back, your friends would stand with you no matter what. So would others... You can't put them through that. Better to vanish.

And...

Yes, you feel them deep within. The blood and the darkness. Waiting for the word that will allow them to consume you. A black and crimson enigma, a mystery you can't begin to unravel. But the galaxy is vast. Perhaps there's an answer to it somewhere out there...

Your hands reach for the controls. The autopilot disengages, surrendering the Silver Shadow.

The endless void rolls beyond the flight cabin's window, stretching out to ebon infinities. A thousand stars glitter, all of them beckoning you.

</tabber>

LotS/The Story/Scaean Gates

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