Sons of the Empire, Chapter Twenty-Six

Gren hated science. Not as an abstract concept, he had no problem with it existing in its own right and regardless of how he felt about it he would have been an imbecile of the highest order if he denied that it was essential. Without men, woman and machines toiling away in laboratories of one form or another, mankind would have failed to survive its first encounters with some of the most mundane infectious diseases let alone managed to rise up out of the ashes of annihilation to claim lordship of the stars. No, he definitely could not pretend that he hated science simply because of what it was. He hated it because of what had been done to him in its name. He had spent the majority of his early life strapped to tables, wired into machines and having various pieces of himself taken apart and put back together again as scholars tried to puzzle out exactly what he was. But after years upon years of endless tests, investigations, questions and trials no one had been able to figure it out. All that they knew was that he was unique. It had taken a legion of the Proconsul's finest explorers the best part of a decade to determine that. They scoured every world in Republican space: from the upside down towers of Vasalax which plunged towards the planet's core away from its surface of toxic ooze like needles into the eye of a voodoo doll, all the way to the carbon-crystal forests of Loz where men went to seclude themselves away to try and carve their names in diamond bark with nothing but their minds. Ships were secretly or not-so-secretly searched and habitat satellites were blockaded until they had been checked for anyone who was even vaguely like him. But everyone who had been charged with the task returned empty handed and none the wiser. As far as he knew they were still looking and still failing.

Even he didn't know what he truly was. Not an alien, that much was obvious. That would have been astonishing, to himself most of all as it would have been the first he'd heard of it, but mankind had learned a long time ago that the galaxy was devoid of other such “evolved” species. Sometimes he thought that was such a shame, but then humanity couldn't even peacefully co-exist with itself so he dreaded to think what would happen if it had to share the galaxy with any other similarly belligerent races. Beyond the borders of the Milky Way no one could be certain, but according to all existing evidence the realms of man existed in isolation. So it wasn't his species that had made him such an object of curiosity, but rather that he represented an interesting and unprecedented variation in the nature of humanity. A genetic flaw had rendered him capable of projecting his will across space. Not at extended range, of course. If that had been within his power, then the Republic would have had him chained to a wall in some lightless dungeon issuing edicts to all corners of creation. That would have been a simpler way of achieving the unity he so desperately sought but it would have been far crueler. Also less interesting. Where was the challenge of getting your enemies to eventually agree with you if they'd never had the chance to be wrong in the first place? The Proconsul and the rest of the prelates didn't see it that way though. In fact, as much as they knew his aberrant gifts were useful they also feared them. With him around they could never be certain if their thoughts were their own, or if he was nudging them in directions they would never have taken if not suggested. Truth be told they had reason to fear him. He was afraid of himself. It was all too easy to reach into someone's mind and tinker with their thoughts as though one were rearranging a stationery cupboard. The temptation was at times almost impossible to resist, and he couldn't say to himself that he had always been a model of discretion.

That was why  he'd spent the majority of his later life roaming the space-ways. He was a useful tool, but just as it was wise to never hold a knife by the blade his superiors had opted to keep him as far as away from them as possible. That way they could be certain he was acting according to their will and not they according to his. He'd used his gifts often enough, most recently with Pinter back on Oreon. If he hadn't then he would never have convinced him to allow those ships to land no matter how much he sweetened the deal via conventional means. But that was different. Pinter owed him a favour. Actually, it was several. It had been no easy task smuggling him out of the Empire after what he did, but helping to ensure the capitulation of his adopted planet was almost enough to settle the debt. The genetic material from a Praetorian was an unexpected but substantial bonus down payment. Jerrin, the roguish brat that better men were forced to call prince, had also felt the effects of his powers of persuasion. He had required lesser levels of manipulation as he lacked the wit to see that his petty, selfish goals perfectly complimented Gren's altruistic visions. Besides, the child hadn't really had a choice in the matter. He either gave Gren what he wanted or stayed in the rubble of his ship on that monstrous rock of a planet to be consumed body and soul by ash and flame. It was a spot of luck that such an “illustrious” personage should just have happened to be on a ship that passed through an ancient testing ground for eclipse-field mines. They were relics of the last war, hidden in shadows between physical reality and the seething sub-strata of the universe. Some were still active and marked out a section of the Republic's secret borders. Not a terribly honest weapon but an effective one. He'd saved the boy's life and promised him the throne he so coveted. All he wanted in return was to make humanity whole again. It was a noble goal, one that the princeling shared in his own twisted way so it hadn't been difficult to convince him. But even that limited amount of coercion did not sit well with Gren. He detested it, as always, but it was better than the alternative in most cases. No one liked dying.

That was the reason he found himself bound to the Republic. When he had been released from the institution he was given an ultimatum: serve or perish. If he'd been born in the Empire then no such choice would have been given. He would have been condemned to die on the examination table the moment his abilities became apparent. His organs would have been put on public display for laymen to gawk at and coo over as they were told that this specimen represented an intolerable threat to the purity of the species. Which was laughable. Generations of life on foreign worlds and in space had already altered segments of the population beyond what any ancient Earth-born would have recognised as human. Yet they were treated no worse than anyone else. In some cases often better, as their particular adaptations meant that they were the only ones capable of doing what they did without impractical mechanical assistance or expensive augmentation. But none of them posed a threat to the status quo, and so were accepted with good grace. Someone like him would have done and as such could not be tolerated. The Republic on the other hand, knew better than to waste such a potentially valuable resource unless it was absolutely unavoidable. He'd pledged his loyalty to the cause and that was good enough. So far he'd given his masters no reason to doubt his word. None that he knew of, at least. Even if he had, he wouldn't care. The nature of his servility had done nothing to dull how keenly he felt a sense of responsibility and duty to his fellow citizens. He served everyone, not the plotting politicians back on the capital world which was why he offered help to any who needed it. Of course, such help often came at a price but it was usually a fair exchange and they were perfectly at liberty to refuse his offers. Generally. If anyone had any complaints they had never made them known to him, but then he supposed that they wouldn't do. Anyone in the Republic wouldn't dare turn down someone clad in a prelate's robes, if word of such rejection reached the wrong ears then the consequences would be unfortunate and unpleasant. Those from worlds beyond its admittedly limited sphere of influence would be so terrified by the mere presence of a descendent of men they had been told had almost destroyed the galaxy (which was an overstatement, as the Empire was hardly all that constituted the contents of known space) that they'd agree to anything just to make him go away.

Which is exactly what he did. He knew better than to overstay his welcome. When he left he always returned, curiously enough, to his own laboratory. Perhaps, the experimental violations he had endured were responsible for piquing his interest. Or it could have been that he had come to realise that even though he had suffered it was for a greater good, only temporarily and after it was over he had been free to go. More or less. Yes, he may have hated science but it was a necessary evil. As he narrowed his eyes at a screen across the room he wondered how many times throughout history that exact same thought crossed the minds of men. Willingly or unwillingly they had seen their inventions and discoveries put to use as weapons or abused for profit, a plague upon mankind instead of a panacea. Then more than ever it needed to be the latter. He moved away from a workbench covered with tools of such unusual and intricate designs that they may well have completely boggled the minds of uninitiated onlookers, he couldn't be certain that even he knew what they all did. The braces on his legs chafed and painkilling pads planted just beneath his skin sent pulses of soothing chemicals directly to the trouble spots. Before the drugs took hold he swatted a drifting drone away. It had done nothing to specifically bother him, all it had tried to do was show him some information regarding the latest genetic profiles of the samples from Oreon. In the seconds before the aches in his muscles faded he had lashed out in frustration, not paying attention to the note beside a particular experiment which read: huge success.

The machine buzzed away through the hovering clouds of holographic calculations and diagrams that filled the air above him like will-o'-the-wisps shepherding him along the tangled road to enlightenment. They cast a pale hue upon the surroundings and turned an otherwise unassuming room into a dreadful vault. Surfaces of ordinary metal seemed to crack and peel like stonework from an age of giants transposed from its natural setting to serve the purposes of man. The girders that criss-crossed the ceiling melted away into a filigree of silver struts that glittered like the polished bones of prized palaeontological specimens. Free-standing computers and various specialised devices were liberally distributed about the room like antiquities in the burial chamber of a king of some long extinct race of machine men. Some were processing data and cataloguing information for ease of reference, others were monitoring ongoing experiments. A few of the more eccentric computers who fancied themselves truly intelligent were postulating the uses of chocolate tea pots, of which they had discovered more than a fair few, or whether or not the universe was actually the smallest thing in existence as opposed to the largest. In relative terms, of course.

But it was a series of capsules set high on a dais of cold, dark metal that looked as if it had been forged from the shadows of an Asmodean realm which was the only object of Gren's immediate attention. Rows of computer consoles arranged like the many-tiered rotunda of a gladiatorial stadium rose up around him, their screens brightened at his approach as the machines sensed his presence and prepared to do his bidding. He gave everything a cursory glance and nodded with approval as he caught glimpses of information that he found to his liking. A good thing too, as it was not unknown for him to throw things at his computers if they told him something he didn't want to know, much to the annoyance of the engineers who had to tidy up after him. Not that he ever forced them to do it, he was quite capable of taking care of his own mess, but he didn't think they'd appreciate him incorrectly configuring a replacement computer and sending power surges through the ship. For the time being though the equipment, and the collective sanity of the ship's mechanics, was safe. He perched himself on a stool, adjusting his leg braces to accommodate the position, and looked up at the containers mounted just above him. They were of a murky green colour that verged on white, like eyes removed from deep sea beasts. Yet no inhuman malice shone within them, instead there was only the sickly glistening of coalescing organic matter as enzymes and nano-bots went about their work. Each one represented years of failed labour. Once, not that long ago it had reached the point where he could barely live with himself. Before he'd been banished from the Proconsul's sight he had sworn on the grave of every mother that he would find a way to reunite humanity. If he couldn't do it then no one could. Such self-assurance had provoked much derisive chuckling as he had been dragged out of the consulate halls, thrown onto his ship and told not to return until he had fulfilled his self-imposed oath. But as they'd laughed he saw into their minds and found that some believed him. They may have been taken aback by his brashness and naive surety, but none of them had ever dared to be so bold as to think his goal could actually be achieved, even though that was the exact reason the prelates had been appointed in the first place. To think that they might actually live to see generations of schemes reach fruition was encouraging. It was also dangerous. The Republic had achieved much and had done well to survive so long in secret after its almost total extermination. Few were willing to risk losing it all on the whims of a mutant. But his abilities aside, Gren had something that no one else had ever possessed since the second dawn of human history: Praetorian D.N.A.

The drone insistently buzzed about his head but he swatted it away again, more out of disinterest than lingering pain-induced anger. Reaching down beside him he picked up a case emblazoned with all manner of warning signs and sigils that any normal man would have trembled to look upon. Gren was not so weak of mind, but he had to admit it was wise for most people to avoid such containers as there was no telling when contact with their contents could have gut-spewing, flesh-shrivelling consequences. The squat box was locked with magnetic bolts that no force could break. Except a gentle brush of Gren's fingers as internal mechanisms sampled his blood and they released the catches with a reluctant clunk. From within it he drew forth another canister of living jade. As a magister would have peered into a scrying orb, he gazed into its verdant depths and saw the future taking shape. Through the mists of possibility came snippets of sights that perhaps he was imagining or...maybe they were real. A wreath of fire ensnared the galaxy which seemed as though it were a pool of liquid diamonds somewhere suspended in a void. The laws of physics were in turmoil as the madly cartwheeling disc of light shed droplets from both its upper and lower surfaces, which spread out to form a web of brilliant crystals connecting all points of reality together as one. If he had not known it was all in his head he might have had to shield his eyes from its supreme lustre for fear that some geode-god would strike him blind for daring to gaze upon its works. Only divine creation or man-made destruction could have brought into being such a sight, and for a moment he feared that his war would be the last not because it did away with the need for conflict but because there would be no one and nothing left in its wake. But as his view grew clearer he saw each nova-burst was a world, not engulfed in the raging infernos of Armageddon but resplendent in a glory that had not been known since the days when civilisation was still enamored with the idea of itself. He saw them one by one at first but then in sweeping blurs that carried him from the far edge of the galaxy to its inner core and on each one he witnessed every hand extended in friendship, every heart open to the joy of life, every mind driven by a singular purpose and every soul free. Amongst the virtually blinding blasts of white there were swathes of rustling crimson cloth caught on breezes at such a height that he feared they would collapse in on themselves and after their achingly slow fall come to suffocate everything beneath them. Then he realised that such a thing would not be possible, even at the end of all ends it would remain held aloft by hands as hard as sculpted marble and just as graceful too. A race of Praetorians he thought, dragon's teeth risen from the dirt to be an ever vigilant vanguard against the collapse of all that they held dear. But no, they were the hands of normal people who had taken charge of their own destiny. Normal people. Just like him, Gren thought as his eyes refocused and he saw only his reflection.

He set the capsule of verdigris gunk on an empty plinth. Latches extended to clamp it in place with a soft click like tendons in the jaw stretching and the whole thing retracted a short distance into the bank of machines as though it were a velvet worm about to devour its prey. Computers began to examine it, deep within the pathways of their circuitry they toiled over calculations that would have taken an organic mind lifetimes to complete. Behind their status lights that blinked like cyclopean eyes regarding the world with utter disdain, the machines turned in on themselves to more closely observe their work. Such a strange thing to be a machine, Gren pondered as he busied himself with organising a shelf of digi-slate tomes. They were not bound by the limits of their form as was the case with biological life, but rather by those imposed upon them by their creators. Within their domain of data and digits they could acquire almost limitless understanding of a thing in the time it would take a human to even begin thinking about it. He shuddered at the thought of what must have run across a processor's simulacrum of a mind as it contemplated the questions its masters posed it. Within the multi-faceted levels of its logic sub-routines must have lurked all the worst that could be imagined and perhaps even more terrible than that, all the horrors that men did not dare to admit dreaming. Machines had cold and unusual minds for which the extermination of a planet warranted no more pause for thought than the simplest of sums. Luckily, more often than not, they were controlled by people who took considerably more care when weighing up the consequences of their actions. 

In Gren's case, that was especially true. He more than anyone appreciated the gravity of the decisions that had to be made if his quest was to succeed. They began with Pinter and his band of miscreants, continued with Jerrin and his spy slave and, as he noted a shift in the ship's trajectory given away by a slight tremble in the bulkheads, they had brought him inexorably to Rustica. He set aside his books and turned to the window. The planet loomed large even though it was still at a distance, magnified it seemed by his own sense of foreboding. He wondered if it wasn't too late to call off the attack, but it had been too late since the moment he became an exile. Everything he had done and everything he would do had been set into motion at that point. Just as one can see a lifetime together laid out in the eyes of a stranger as they meet by chance across a room, Gren knew exactly what he was going to do. It had happened, it would happen, it was happening. He didn't want to see the planet burn and he hoped it wouldn't come to that, just as he hoped that when the time came Governor Tandis would remember who it was that had helped make her career by avoiding a famine that would have devastated the lives of billions.  

Sons of the Empire, Chapter Twenty-Five

The rest of the galaxy may have been silent, but Oreon certainly wasn't. A fact that Davvid most definitely did not appreciate as he spat the sour taste of homebrew out of his mouth. His tongue felt like it was wrapped in hair. Hair that had been shed, left to gather dust in the corner of a slum room, flushed down a drain to accumulate an unimaginable amount of filth until it was scooped up and dumped into his mouth to choke the joy of life from him. Just one of the many, many unpleasant side effects of allowing himself to get so drunk he couldn't even remember the meaning of the word “stand” let alone manage to do it. But he had been celebrating. Somebody had to, and if nobody else was going to then he figured it might as well be him. Although if his throbbing cerebral tissue would allow him, he had to admit that there might not have been much cause to throw a party. The collapse of the intergalactic communications network wasn't exactly insignificant, but it also didn't matter all that much. Not for him or anyone else on Oreon. They never used it because they didn't want to talk to outsiders, and outsiders never wanted to talk to them. So they had no need for long range communications, any signals sent to or from the planet were for in-system purposes only. The only difference was that it made the planet seem even lonelier than it had been. Not that anyone who had been forced to live there by circumstances beyond their control cared all that much. They got along just fine.

Or did they? He was starting to wonder. As he'd swigged mugs of gut rot down in a bar off the market, hoping the burning sensation working its way up his abdomen was just indigestion rather than the liquid dissolving his internal organs, he noticed the mood was more cut-throat than usual. On any given day he'd have to break up at least three brawls in places such as that, some started for no other reason than boredom. But his years in the worthless wastes of the planet had taught him that it was never wise to make light of boredom. A man with an empty head and nothing to do was just as dangerous, if not more so, than a man possessed of all the knowledge of the libraries of Earth and a cunning plan. That was why throughout the ages such men had been controlled with drink and drugs and gambling whilst being encouraged to turn their dissatisfaction against others who were just like them. They had been kept feral amongst their own kind but conditioned by their wretchedness to mewl and whine in the presence of their self-anointed betters like bitches in heat presenting themselves to hounds. But Davvid had seen the use of such men. He'd seen them raise homes where there were only ruins. He'd seen them turn a wilderness into a fortress. He'd seen them take a world that no one wanted and make it their own. Such men were the reason the Empire had turned its back on him. In their own way they were kings. They were also murderers and thieves, the lowest of the low given no glory except what they could prise out of the monstrous grasp of Oreon's unforgiving surface. Most of their eyes drilled holes in Davvid's back. It was not paranoia that told him so, a great many men on Oreon were actually out to get him. The darkness in their eyes pressed upon his spine like the points of knives kindling his nerves. Others were fixed on his own, their mutual glint the candle light by which the gods of murder inked their bloody grimoires in halls of gore-drenched stone. He'd given no one any more than the usual reasons to hate him, so why then was he regarded with more disgust than an overflowing toilet? Perhaps it wasn't what he'd done but what he was about to do, or rather what was going to be done because of him. Couldn't he see that there had been no choice? Would they prefer that he had refused the prelate? He doubted they would praise his integrity when their frigid world was wreathed in nuclear fire after Gren was done venting his fury.

It was guilt both projected and imposed that made his last drink more foul than the others as he'd finished his binge. He winced as the dreadful brew crawled down his throat to settle in his belly like a puddle of napalm, and returned to his quarters. No, that wasn't quite right. The hangover had addled his memory and turned it into a story of its own devising. In truth he'd gone elsewhere first before he slunk back to his bed. He wanted to see if the same scimitars of hate were brandished in the eyes of more sober folk. So he found himself in a place where women, wrapped in links of chain and tattered swathes of cloth to ward off what little of the cold would respect the barriers of clothing, stood guard over the...homes they had helped their husbands build. They seemed lost between layers of space and time, their flesh made ageless as a mountainside by Oreon's pitiless precipitation and in it were written tales of the suffering of every woman who ever lived in an unkind house. He saw children foraging for scraps in the rubble of ships that had once been palaces that sailed the stars, fallen to the surface like milestones along a hidden celestial highway lost amongst a tangled growth of galaxies. The parts gathered from the festering spires would be sold as scraps as most others, but some were fashioned into trinkets that were greatly prized by those who lived and died on the edges of the galaxy with nothing more to their name than what they could take. No pirate trophy or grisly wound was more feared than a token from Oreon, amongst those few who knew the planet even existed at least. The reason still seemed odd to him, even after all those years on the planet, but it was a good one: men who went looking for and found something akin to beauty on a dead world were not to be trifled with. As the children looked up from their work he found no loathing in their eyes, just the weariness of those who hadn't given up on life even though it had given up on them. Perhaps he would have felt sorry for them if he did not admire them so. But if he felt sorry for them then he felt more so for himself. He may have lived on Oreon but it was not truly his world. It belonged to those around him, those poor people who huddled against the savage winds as they would cower from the fangs of a beast. He'd done his best to try and keep them safe, what little he could anyway. In his haste to protect a people he had no choice but to call his own, a people who had turned their back on one empire, he'd set them on a course to become part of another.

It would be a good thing. He knew it. But then why did he have such misgivings? He looked at himself in the polished side of a locker. His face blocked out the light of returning memories, which may or may not have been dreams, and replaced it with an ugly truth. He was a traitor. Treachery ran so deep through his veins that he had betrayed a world of traitors. As he strapped a pistol to his belt and tucked another two into his coat, he told himself it was no more than anyone else would have done. The prelate came to him and promised to help. He kept his word. You could ask no more from a man than that. But more was given with no expectation of repayment. At first he'd thought it the same old trick that monsters have used throughout history to get what they want from those who lacked the wits to see through the propaganda, or to understand that when a tyrant said the word “freedom” it meant “slavery.” The Republic had yet to deliver them from the latter into the former, or vice versa if that was truly their intent, but help had arrived on a regular basis in the form of medicine, food, equipment and information. It was only once their military set down in their bulbous black ships that he truly understood what such aid would entail in the long term. Thankfully, they were far away on the other side of the planet nestled in great canyons as tall as countries were wide but somehow he felt them like a tumour in his throat. Some were afraid of terrorists and criminals whose wanton acts of violence were explained away by whispers from the heavens or a will to power. But he had always been more afraid of legions of men with guns in armour who used their weapons not as instruments of justice but as tools of oppression. Even when he had been one of them, nothing scared him more than the sight of a man who hid his face behind a helmet because he was ashamed of the orders he followed. They were the men who ruined worlds; they were the men who destroyed dreams; they were the men who spat on the ideals their uniforms stood for. They were also the kind of men he'd gone to Oreon to escape, and he'd let them conquer the planet without firing a shot. So at last the true picture began to emerge out of a galaxy-wide magic eye image, each world was just another fragment in the baffling grandiosity of the schemes of greater men than himself. Or at least those who had been allowed to be greater. Still, at least they kept to themselves. For the moment.

As he fumbled with the door locks he cursed his new hand. An Imperial surgeon would have grown a perfect replica, but the Republicans had hardly been in a position to keep up with the times. He was surprised the doctor had been able to construct anything better than a flipper. Pleased though he was not to have a useless stump at the end of his arm he still found it difficult to manipulate his fingers and everything felt cold to the touch, although that might have been due to the fact that on Oreon almost everything actually was cold to the touch. He kicked a heating vent next to the door and it rattled back to life like a half-drowned man coughing up a lungful of water. The lukewarm air it wheezed into the room did little more than stir dust motes up from the floor which found themselves caught on the edge of a guillotine blade of silver light that slanted down through the unshielded window slits above Davvid's bunk. He recoiled from the glare and mashed the door's keypad as though swatting at the buttons would force his headache out through his fist and into the walls. That was a stupid idea. Even through the lingering haze of alcohol and pain killers he still felt his newly knitted nerves shudder at the impact. More painful still was the view that confronted him as the door opened. His world had been reduced to corridors and conduits, not counting the odd jaunt to some scraggy outcropping of ice and rock somewhere on the planet. That was if he was “lucky.” He considered going back to bed and sleeping until the end of all things, or at the very least his life, wiped his misery away. But he was late for his shift.

Not that anyone would call him out about that but he had to maintain the pretence of caring. He may not have liked the job but, well, what else was he going to do? Just in case anyone was wondering where he was, he signalled to the command centre that he'd start his day with a leisurely sojourn around the main hub. It was an easy beat that entailed dealing with nothing more than a few rough sleepers and the odd aggressive sing-along at a food vendor. None of the patrol routes were exactly a stroll in a rose garden but at least the one he'd picked didn't involve traipsing through partially radioactive snow-slush on the rooftops or tracking degenerates along the mushroom riddled pathways of the sub-basements. Smiling at being able to offer himself such a small perk he poked his head around a corner and looked out along the market corridor. Nothing. Well, not quite nothing he realised as he strode down the hall. A bartender was mopping vomit off the deck plating whilst a couple of his staff gathered bits of broken furniture. Now, he liked to give the impression that he was no expert in such matters by any means, but it looked to him like there had been a fight. A big one. Probably not long after he'd left, the men who had wanted to take a pop at him had turned on each other. Judging by the looks of the bar he couldn't say he was sorry to have missed it. He waved away the garbled complaints of the owner, his dialect was too irregular and Davvid found it next to impossible to determine whether he was speaking Standard or a language he'd cobbled together from scraps of every swear word known to man. He'd send a deputy along to take statements and collect samples from the blood splatters eventually. If any of the injured were awake, or still alive, then they'd be found soon enough. There was nowhere for them to and if they were stupid enough to run off into the wastelands then they deserved their fate.

Some of the more eager traders were already setting up shop to flog their wares. He would have called them humble but it wasn't an appropriate word to describe the mismatched contraptions that they pulled out of crates and bags as though they were precious things from far off lands. Junk was the word he would have used, though not out loud and to the trader's themselves. That would have resulted in a swift beating whether he was a designated peace keeper or not. It might not have been pretty but some of it was admittedly useful. A fact that a recently arrived group of mercenaries, all heavy brows and unnecessarily broad arms, had obviously taken note of as they watched the unpacking with more than the casual interest of passing shoppers. He hadn't been notified of their presence. They must have landed last night whilst he was sleeping off the grog. Why they'd chosen that moment to visit the planet he wasn't sure. For all he knew the galaxy was at war with itself, that seemed like the perfect time for enterprising young men (which was generally a euphemism for heartless bastards) to make fortunes off of the misfortunes of others. Just like they always had. But he supposed that it was too risky. Those kind of people only got involved with fights they could win. They could have been scrounging the space-ways, collecting debris battlefields but then it took a special kind of sociopathic tendency to so callously pick through the bones of worlds just on the off chance of making a profit. That was a task best suited to those of more mercantile dispositions, who didn't feel so much as a shiver of guilt as they sold people what they knew to be rubbish dressed up as treasure. Perhaps some people had no one but themselves to blame. They should have been able to see through the ruse. But when almost everything was a lie it was next to impossible to see the truth.

But he had seen it. Through and in the prelate's eyes he had witnessed the truth. Initially it presented itself to him as a half-formed thought or like a shadow stapled to the bottom of a shallow pool. But then it made itself known in an absolute form. He saw his own life lived countless times throughout history just as it was being lived countless times in the present across the known universe, in every solar system and on every world. A small thing amongst many others, a tiny sphere in an ocean of ball bearings, each one unique in its own right as far as it was separate but identical nonetheless. At first it had made him miserable beyond his capacity to feel, an emotion of such intensity that it became the antithesis of feeling. Even then as he walked through the hallways beyond the market under flickering striplights and hissing pipes, he felt that emptiness resounding in his chest. Its echoes matched his heartbeat and then kept pace with his steps, their resonance extended out through the floor as though he too was marching with the rest of mankind to war. A veil drew itself over his perceptions and hid from view the shabby environs he passed through like effluent along a fat-clotted sewer pipe. Instead he saw a funnel into which was poured every life that was, had been or ever would be and watched helplessly as they were ground down into a rancid paste by the machinations of those who were more monsters than men. It was only when he saw two scrawny residents, both just on the verge of leaving what the planet's inhabitants laughably called childhood, hastily part company at his approach that he realised that he was still in the real world. The waking nightmare crawled back into the darkest undulating chasms of his mind and left him standing outside the praetorian lab, tapping his foot and wondering where to go next.

But there was really only one option. He may not have held the praetorians in such high esteem as other Imperials but there was something about them that still intrigued him. It was his attempts to find out what that was that meant he'd spent more time in the presence of that organic antiquity than almost anyone else other than the technicians who had worked it over. It still surprised him how he let himself believe that a corpse could see him through walls. He felt like his every movement was being judged by a man far older and wiser than any human had a right to be. The door locks cycled for a moment or two as he squirmed under that imaginary gaze. If he had a more colourful mind perhaps it would have seemed like seals on an ancient vault unravelling within themselves as their enchantments withered at the utterance of a secret word. He snorted roughly as the lab's acrid air hissed into the corridor. It was one of the only smells he'd ever encountered that made him wish he didn't have nostrils. His shoulders hunched involuntarily against the cold as the doors closed behind him. Maybe it was just the hangover but he felt like he was shutting himself inside his own tomb. All that was missing was the chanting of priests and the wailing of widows. Or maybe it was the genetically perfect corpse floating in a tank of preservative fluid at the far end of the room that filled him with such macabre dread. Yes, it was more than likely that. He found his fingers trembling near the clasp of his holster as he approached the tube. He knew that there was no chance of the praetorian coming back to life, but stranger things had happened than bodies rising from the grave. Then he thought of the samples that the prelate had taken with him, scraped from the ancient soldier's open wounds that had puckered somewhat after prolonged exposure to liquid, and knew that in a manner of speaking that was exactly what was about to happen.

Sons of the Empire, Chapter Twenty-Four

Silence. Such a terrible thing. Even the benign absence of artificial sound along a country lane, for all its comforting naturality, was a harbinger of man's most terrible fear: loneliness. Everyone liked being by themselves from time to time. But leave someone alone long enough and even the hardiest of souls would find itself driven to the brink of lunacy, clawing at the walls that surrounded it until they oozed thick rivulets of slime which in their unctuous sloshing would seem to whisper every degrading insult a mind could imagine had ever been uttered about it. Out of that pestilential swill would rise spectral monsters robed with filth that would peck and prod and probe until nothing remained of the person that had once been except for a gibbering wreck, huddled on the floor decrying the day it was spawned from the womb of its own loathing. Imagine then the madness of that singular isolation magnified a million million times until loneliness consumed the entire galaxy and silence drowned the worlds of man, as unearthly bells tolling each syllable of the prophecies of Revelations would wash away the pleading whispers of the faithless and accursed. With the deactivation of the communications network every planet in the Empire had been cast adrift in the void, disconnected from the bonds of fellowship and law that had held civilisation together since the last true war. Out there in the dark, humanity was tearing itself apart and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop it.

Karlo's muddled mind resurfaced from its fugue as the skyline was thrown into monochrome silhouette by a lash of light that plunged between the buildings. Seconds later the clouds cracked their knuckles. Was it a storm or had a bombardment begun? It couldn't have been the latter. Not yet. The Republic ships were still too far away. Weren't they? He supposed that if they had already breached the planet's defences then the streets would have been awash with screams. Even behind the layers of reinforced glass he would have been able to hear them; countless voices hoarse with horror as the city was vivisectioned by orbital lasers. Thankfully all he heard instead was the low, steady hum of the building's back-up generators. After being cut off from the rest of the galaxy the planet had descended into chaos. Since Novagrad had a long history of human habitation, it was mild mannered and low level but chaos all the same. The planet may have been a navy stronghold but there was only so much that could be done when upwards of ten billion people decided to test their luck when they discovered the reigns of Imperial power had fallen slack. The babelian towers of the city alternately had their power plants taken off-line as part of rolling blackouts introduced by way of protest for better pay and conditions for industrial workers. They were a minor inconvenience but tolerable and understandable. Still, he was unnerved by the sporadically twitching darkness. From a distance it turned the city into a zoetrope where spindly shadows cavorted in the rubble of looted buildings. Stars reflected off broken glass that littered the streets, each ethereal speck like a malicious thought forming in the eyes of thwarted dreamers.

As his own eyes adjusted he thought for a moment that he was at home, in bed watching hover-prop running beams strobe across the ceiling whilst he tried to shake off the caffeine-induced tremors of a day spent at a console. He wished he was. He wasn't one to pray, because officially there was nothing to pray to, and he was not one who believed in the pagan spirits that had been ancient beyond understanding before man had given them names. If he had been either, then at that moment he might just have caught himself begging to be safely tucked up in his chambers. Instead he was in his office. His museum. What good had it done to gather all those trinkets, to archive thousands of documents and to solicit the testimony of historians from across the galaxy? The work had done little else other than help him build an impressive collection of curios and memorabilia. Should the worse happen and the Republic won the war then perhaps he could trade his trove for leniency or even a pardon, if not for the planet then at least for himself. That was the most selfish thought he'd ever had, and the fact that it had even entered into his consideration was an affront to everything that the insignia on his uniform stood for. Was that the kind of person he wanted to be? Were his role models the parasitic corporate kings of old who drained the strength from those who laboured under them only to move on to find new feeding grounds once the money was all gone or they were discovered and exposed? They left in their wake a squirming husk of a company, city, country or even continent as though they were discarding a soiled prophylactic sheath. Were such degenerates worthy of emulation even in thought? No. Karlo had served the Empire his entire life and would do so even with his death if necessary. He hoped it wouldn't come to that but as a military man he did not have the luxury of choosing how and where he died. Or when. Or why.

Neither did the men and women he had ordered to the aphelion of the last planet in the system where the space around the smog smothered sphere of Saluw, a granite giant's eye of a gas planet set in a ring of glittering dust, had become a battleground. Or at least, the only one he currently knew of. Without intergalactic communications it was impossible to know what was happening elsewhere, but if the local communiques he'd been receiving were anything to go by then the situation was much the same if not worse. Saluw's atmospheric siphons had been the pride of generations, their intangible bounty made material through its use in the forges and foundries that supplied the system with its ships and machines. But where once they had been placed at the apex of the planet's glory, the onset of war had left them wallowing in the depths of the relentless storms that surged through its skies. Great spans of metal interconnected to form platforms, that encased the stone-hued world like a puff of cigarette smoke caught in a glass, had been pummelled by explosive shells and seared by coruscating beams of laser light until their orbital tethers had given way and they were swallowed whole by the all-devouring maws of titanic tornadoes. The planet's ring had been all but rent asunder by the blast of atomic detonations and through gaps in the formerly pristine concentric circles of rock poured waves of fighter vessels. As spikes of frozen shadow they seemed and from their dagger-snouts spewed forth all manner of munitions that shattered the silence of space. In its place they put their own voiceless roar of death and destruction. Behind them drifted the bloated forms of carrier ships and battle cruisers, their hulls bristled with particle lances and cannon barrels so that they resembled viral organisms come to corrupt every world in their path. So it was that around them they exuded slowly expanding spheres of slaughter that turned everything caught within them into scraps of splintered metal. As sword blades on an anvil they glowed before they turned brittle in the vacuum and drifted off into the darkness like chunks of cooling lava tumbling to the bottom of the sea.

Imperial ships like fallen towers of solid silver ploughed forward with their engines at full burn, the solar system tilted around them whilst they manoeuvred as though the ferocity of their acceleration threatened to tear reality at the seams. Against the backdrop of Saluw they vanished for a moment until they captured the sun light and appeared as mercurial thunderbolts hurled across space and time to smite Novagrad's approaching foes. Their flanks belched a cannonade that smashed against defensive shields which buckled under the furious gunfire. Arcs of projected energy whipped out into the void where beneath the skin of the conscious world the quantum foam foundations of existence bubbled and boiled at the intrusion. Armour plates were ground to powder as shells packed with the very essence of hellfire detonated in bursts of liquid infernos that cast an amber pall over the entire area. A carrier vessel ruptured amidships as it reactors overloaded. Curtains of light billowed from the massive wound and superheated metal folded in on itself as though dragons were hatching their way back into the world. Fighters and life boats scattered from its docking bays, droplets of bile dripping from the jaws of vanquished monster. A terrible omen from on high, the carrier drifted towards Saluw. Behind it blazed a trail of incinerating particulates as the bisected ship impacted with the atmosphere; storm fronts caught the flames and twisted them to their will like flowers being sculpted from molten glass. Then the ship fell through the upper layers of clouds and plunged ever further into the atmosphere where it was inexorably crushed and crumpled until it settled into a sea of compressed gas like a gigantic robotic fist clenched in declaration of vengeance against the galaxy.

Word of the battle made its way back to Novagrad and that was when the panic truly began. Karlo had been expecting it much sooner, almost hoping for it so that the planet's population could get over it and realise they still had jobs to do. It was a credit to the people, as well as to how closely policed they were, that street violence had been kept to a minimum. Of course, there had been civil disobedience and some violent clashes instigated by the more outspokenly disgruntled citizens, but all in all the peace had largely kept itself. Until that moment. News of the clash in orbit of Saluw spread through the streets like the wind through a grove of naked trees. Where before there were peacefully milling crowds, lost in a vague cloud of confusion mingled with determination to resist shock, in its place were clashing throngs of people running for their lives like wildebeest fleeing jaws snapping at their necks. He wondered if there had been similar disorder when those who did a lot to establish and attribute worth but accomplished nothing of value, lost control of their world to people who refused to bow to anyone simply because their bank balance demanded it. From that distance he could not see, but he knew that the people down there rolled their eyes madly as they hunted for open spaces which if they...could...only... reach then that would be all they'd need to regain their composure. 

But it eluded them constantly, their efforts always duplicated by another such astonished soul who had forgotten what other people looked like even though they were in a mob. So they continued on their frantic dash towards their homes or bomb shelters. The space ports were packed to capacity as people tried to board the few remaining transports because they knew that if they didn't leave immediately, then they probably never would. Some headed underground to take refuge in the labyrinthine system of train tunnels and pedestrian motor-stairway tubes that the planet's mass-transit system had devolved into over the the centuries. No one knew where it began and it never seemed to end; rumour had it that someone could spend an entire life criss-crossing the globe many times over and never once see the light of day. Those burrows and dens spread throughout most of the planet's upper crust as though it had been infiltrated by the roots of a divine machine tree that had da Vinci's brain as its seed. Those subterranean refugees had more than a fair chance of survival, that was if the Republican bombardment didn't bring their ready-made hideaways crashing down around them before it cracked the planet in half.

Karlo had considered sending out troops to maintain what little order was left, but that would have done more harm than good. The last thing anyone wanted was a bunch of soldiers getting jumpy and starting a massacre. Besides the custodians had practically everything under control, as much as was possible anyway and the military had other things to worry about. First on the agenda, and most shameful for the admiral, was the evacuation of essential naval assets. That meant him. Amongst other personnel and equipment. He was to be bundled onto a ship and whisked away from Novagrad, as though he were nothing more than a box of embarrassing documents. He could picture it already: the accusing glares of people at the barricades, daring him to admit that he was running away and leaving them to die; the hateful gnashing of their teeth around insults that turned to pleas as they realised his ship might be their only way off world; soldiers with their guns readied and aimed, just a breath away from being fired into the crowd, as he was bundled up the embarkation ramp of his ship and sealed away from people that just wanted a chance to live. That wasn't exactly how he wanted to be remembered. Was it cowardly of him to leave? Most would say yes, even if they were presented with evidence to the contrary. But what good would it have done for him to remain? The local defence forces had their orders and he trusted that they'd be followed, just as he was trusted to follow his own. If he'd had his way then he would have stayed on Novagrad until his office had turned to rubble around him and the Republican relics he'd collected were ash on an infernal wind.

But his own way was something he rarely got as a voice from the door of his office reminded him, 'Admiral, it's time.'

Karlo felt like he was in the path of a falling monolith of light and the soldier's words came out as though he had been invited to his last meal. 'I don't want to go.' But despite the bravado of his thoughts, he didn't really want to stay either. That just seemed like the more honourable option. He placed his hands on his desk and hooked his thumbs under the lip of the tabletop as though that simple act would cement him in place forever. Strange that he had longed for so many years to get away from his desk and now that the perfect opportunity had presented itself he didn't much feel like seizing it.

The soldier had been expecting some difficulty in extricating the admiral from his office but the impudent, kiddish tone of the old man's voice was disarmingly unusual. He didn't quite know how to react. 'Perhaps not, sir, but Earth will need us.' Hopefully a reminder of the admiral's duty would get him moving.

'Earth doesn't need us, it never really has. What good will saving it do if there's nothing else left?' Karlo gestured out towards the city as though it had already been lost. Parts of it had been. The whip-crack of gunshots sliced through the air as men lost their nerve and started pulling triggers.

'It's our home.' That much was obvious surely. Every human alive felt the same arcane connection to the homeworld, at least publicly and hearing that assumption undermined was not exactly the most comfortable of sensations.

'No. It's not.' Even that muttered contradiction of his beliefs made Karlo feel as though a life of patriotism was being ripped from him like a magician pulling a flag from his throat. 'Have you ever seen it with your own eyes? Have you ever set foot on it or felt its air fill your lungs?' Some would have claimed that such things didn't matter, but they would be wrong. In some ways swearing allegiance to Earth was like bending the knee to a fairy tale. A grim one.

'No, sir. I've never left this system.' Why would he want to? The galaxy may have been a big place but its emptiness was terrifying, and the parts where people were generally turned out to be even worse.

'Then it is not your home, just as it isn't mine. Novagrad is where we belong, and we're abandoning it.' Worse than that. 'I'm abandoning it.'

'You're too important to leave behind.' That might not have been entirely true, but perhaps an appeal to the admiral's ego would do the trick and be enough to make him get a move on.

'More so than the billions of people who will be stuck here once we're gone?' Karlo stopped any back chat with a show of his palm. 'It's all right. I don't expect you to answer that.' It was impossible.

'People coped when the Republic attacked before. They will now.' If it hadn't had been disrespectful to do so, the soldier would have shrugged. He understood the gravity of the situation, it was just that realistically there was only one thing to do. The same thing that mankind had always done: just get on with things.

Karlo didn't think that really made any difference. 'No one should have to just cope with anything, least of all this.' He tried to look outside but found that he wasn't as fond of the view as he used to be.

'We really should be going, sir.' As sympathetic as he was to the admiral's emotional state, the soldier found himself inching towards the door in a bid to make his escape. He might not have wanted to leave Novagrad but he didn't want to die on it either. Not yet anyway.

'Yes, I suppose we should.' Karlo turned away from the windows and took one last look at his collection. At least some good had come of his work: no one would refuse to believe the Republic still existed ever again. 'Grab that case over there and follow me.'

Their arrival at the ship was without incident. Karlo didn't know if he was relieved or disappointed about that. There was a crowd but it had been driven off ages ago, only trace signs of it remained behind. Shoes. Jackets. Luggage. Spots of blood from when things had turned nasty. Nothing out of the ordinary. Given the circumstances it could have been worse; there might have been sanitation robots picking lumps of flesh off of the carpet and wiping blood off the walls with that same insane passivity that they did anything. He was escorted aboard the waiting schooner through a silence of such remarkable depth that it seemed to be holding the roof up. If he'd thrown open the departure lounge doors it would have rushed out into the streets and sent the world to sleep. Through skylights came the flash of concentrated laser beams arcing up into the clouds, each one like the rib of an energy being used to keep a tally of death. A few mute bursts of light marked explosions in orbit. Karlo wondered if there was some omnipresent force taking note of the deaths and cataloguing them so that if no one survived the war, at least the universe would remember. But no voice was recounting the tales of the dead, it was only a young woman telling him to brace for immediate launch. As the vessel blasted away from the system he could only watch as the space around Novagrad turned into a maelstrom of ruined metal that would soon engulf the galaxy.

Sons of the Empire, Chapter Twenty-Three

When Alvin received a meeting request from Governor Tandis he had no doubts as to why she wanted to see him. The message was delivered with typical official disinterest and the same maniacal passivity with which one might issue a declaration of war or the redundant shame of someone offering a surrender. It was given without much fanfare or fuss, almost in the hopes that it would go unnoticed until after the fact when it didn't really matter any more. He found it waiting for him on his wrist-top when he returned from an inspection of the gunnery decks. The meaning behind the message was abundantly clear. Indeed it would have been impossible to feign even marginal mystification when the only words shared between the governor and himself since the Hermod landed were the ones printed on the screen: “Your presence is demanded. Immediately.” She knew about the other ships. She had to. He couldn't think of any other circumstances that would have coerced her into breaking her embargo on direct contact with naval troops. But it would have been nice of her not to have left him clutching at black painted straws in a dark room.

She didn't even tell him where they were supposed to meet, he had to ask the messenger program for that information. Its emoticon-based interactive subroutines flashed up a snooty tangle of simulated exasperation. Clearly it thought that such information would have been obvious, even though it was the first time Alvin had been on the planet and he had no idea where the governor would be at any given moment. A snippy response typed itself out across his wrist-top providing him with the desired data. Granary Site Eleven. Where? The software must have registered his frown of befuddlement as it hastily added co-ordinates and displayed them relative to the ship's position to alleviate his ignorance of local geography. Oh there! He angled his wrist at the window, lining the map up until he was sure that it was pointing him towards the nearest cluster of conurbation of the horizon. After being asked if he would like to RSVP Alvin dismissed the program without a response, he thought it would be equally obvious that he had no choice but to go. He didn't think washing his hair would be a believable excuse for not accepting that particular invitation, or any other for that matter.

Besides he was tired of going over crew reports of tactical drills. Getting out and about, even if it was to be shouted at by an angry politician, would do him some good. Seated in his quarters he could see local cargo ships firing their landing jets as they settled down in the distance like fireflies digging their own graves. The faint glow from a city on the edge of a foreverness of fields, which was apparently Granary Site Eleven if the topographical overlay he'd seen was correct, reminded him of the fusion furnaces on Mechanis when seen from orbit. Would he ever look upon those blooms of man-made star fire again? As much as he had wanted to get away from that planet, it was the job he had hated more than the place. In some sense it had been as much a home as a man in his position could ever hope to find. A navy life was not a stationary one, unless you were high ranking enough not to have to actually do anything. His thoughts turned to Admiral Worfeld, secreted away in his office indulging his hobby of collecting and studying fragments of a broken history in order to protect a fractured future. Even if his mission was a success and a war was averted, who could say that another one wouldn't start a few years down the line? It was inevitable that without total and true unity mankind would always find cause to go to war. Faith was no longer an issue; mankind's mindset had purged itself of that poison. Wars were no longer waged simply because people worshipped imaginary beings, the difference between which was often only how their names were spelled. Infidel and heretic were words that had lost their meaning. Nationality had been rendered irrelevant when in the wake of a conflict that had burned Earth to cinders, the survival of the species rather than bigoted fragments of it became the only concern. All that remained of the old ways, was money. Granted, it was largely worthless seeing as it was just a representative token that had no inherent value yet some still prided themselves on how much they had managed to acquire. Even worse, they considered themselves better than those who had less. He knew that in some ways the Republican's cause was just; they wanted to complete the revolution that had started with the Empire's founding. But no amount of rationality could excuse their methods. Everyone was right to fear them.

He cleared his desk of a stack of digi-slates and cracked open a self-heating ration pack of concentrated stew. Blowing on a spoonful of what could only loosely be considered food he wondered if Tandis would allow the ship to restock its supplies. Surely that wouldn't have been an outlandish request to make of an agri-world, especially during a harvest. But asking for that as well as shore leave would have been like strapping his luck into a lead suit and pushing it out of an airlock into the gravity well of a neutron star. Still he had to chance it, he'd do anything to avoid having to live entirely on ration packs for as long as possible. His meal sat heavy in his stomach as he went to find Elliot. The invitation hadn't specified that he go alone and the ensign would do well enough to provide moral support should he need it, which he most certainly would if his assumptions about the purpose of the meeting were correct. If all else failed to mollify her about the imminent arrival of his reinforcements then he could always chuck the poor boy at the governor and make a run for it. He'd probably last a good few seconds against her, time enough to at least try and make a get away. Should he go armed or unarmed? He mulled over the question whilst regarding his reflection both with and without his pistol in a wall panel at the end of the commissary where Elliot was chatting with some of the other junior officers. It was just before a shift rotation so the room was largely empty, the sounds of their hushed voices carried far. Stainless steel tables with built-in benches were aglow with light from a sky like a sheet of beaten gold just ever so slightly out of reach beyond the glass ceiling. The purloined radiance turned the tables into candles floating on a darkened lake of ebony floor tiles. Alvin approached the huddled group which immediately ceased its activities as soon as its members became aware of his presence. More seasoned captains might have found that suspicious, but he still remembered what it was like to be in the lower ranks. There were things you could talk about with your equals that your superiors just wouldn't understand.

'Gentlemen, shifts change in five minutes and I believe you have duties to attend to.' Alvin announced to men who were already leaving before he'd spoken like strikers fleeing a Pinkerton. 'Ensign Cordova, you're with me.' He started to walk away expecting Elliot to follow whether he wanted to or not.

Elliot swept the remains of his meal into a recycling canister and dragged himself to his feet. 'What is it, sir?'

Alvin buttoned up his tunic as if it would somehow make him more respectable. He gave thanks to whatever gods might once have existed that he didn't have to put on a tie or any other such ridiculous affectation of fashion. 'I've got a meeting with Governor Tandis, and I want you to join me.'

The captain said that like it was a good thing. Elliot knew otherwise. 'As a distraction in case something goes wrong?'

'Would you believe me if I said no?' Alvin asked as he tried to dodge his transparency.

'Not really, sir. Don't worry, I'm used to it. Admiral Worfeld used me to escape from inconvenient situations on a regular basis, mostly when Captain Soto was around. He didn't seem to like him, but I never understood why. He's not too bad if you're willing to overlook his constant apologising.'

'I'm not sure I could.' It did sound rather aggravating.

'It does take some getting used to.' Elliot had to agree, after the first time he'd been used as a diversion he considered resigning his commission and getting a job studying the chemical composition of snowflakes in a nice quiet Kuiper belt. 'A bit like the food on this ship, I don't think I've fully adjusted yet.' He said as he worried about his intestines.

Alvin knew exactly what the ensign meant. The food back on Mechanis may have been predominantly underwhelming but it had at least been homely. The mass produced rations on the ship had all started to taste the same. 'Well, assuming we both survive this meeting hopefully the governor will allow us to resupply and take a spot of shore leave.'

Holding the commissary door open to allow Alvin through Elliot said, 'That would be nice, sir.'

'Nice is not a word I would use to describe the streets of Rustica being overrun by soldiers!'

Alvin didn't flinch at the governor's somewhat impressive display of anger. She'd raged at him for five solid minutes before she spat the word “soldiers” like an expletive and dropped into a chair to regain her strength. She leant against the splayed petal backrest and fanned herself to ward off the humidity of the late evening air. He had expected the meeting to take place in her executive offices but instead, upon arrival at Granary Site Eleven they had been escorted by a pair of custodians to a rooftop garden in which the governor conducted some of her personal experiments. She may not have been the most enthusiastic of farmers but she clearly cultivated an interest in the work. He supposed it helped her credibility at election time. After batting the hovering leaves of a photosynthetic hologram out of his face he responded, 'It wouldn't be for long; a week at most.'

'Do you have any idea how much trouble your men could get into during that time?' Patrisha asked as she moved over to a potting table to examine a soil sample. There was a fungus she didn't recognise growing in it. She'd have to ask one of the eukaryote analysts to take a look at it later. She'd once heard that the entire population of an agri-world had been killed by an outbreak of a strain of human affecting Ophiocordyceps. She didn't much like the idea of having her citizens butchering and hoarding each other so that a parasitic mould could safeguard the next generation of its spores. But that planet had been cleansed by fire, knowledge of its existence known only to those for whom obscure farming almanacs were considered light bedtime reading. Rustica was perfectly safe. From zombie mushrooms at least. The navy was another matter entirely.

'Do you?' Alvin had an inkling himself but he doubted that the officers under his command would find a way to turn the governor's rural utopia into a planetary bordello. It wasn't entirely impossible, but it wasn't very likely.

Setting aside her irrational (hopefully) fear of being patient zero in an outbreak of brainwashing parasitic fungi, Patrisha looked up from her work. 'Well, no. We've never had so many naval officers planetside at the same time before but that's besides the point.' She peeled off a layer of skin sealant and dropped it into a slot in the wall of her potting shed where the artificial dermal tissue was incinerated as it slid through a laser beam. 'I know what you people are like. You do nothing but fight and drink.' She turned to the two officers wagging a freshly unveiled finger as though she'd just stepped out of an archaic propaganda poster.

'I can think of a few other things.' Elliot mentally added to the governor's list as he used a finger to gingerly investigate the perception range of a carnivorous water lily floating in one of the lowest tiers of an ornamental fountain.

Alvin noticed the suggestive tone of the ensign's comment and snapped disapprovingly but not without a slight smirk, 'You're not helping.' Not that he had really expected him to when he opted to bring him along.

Patrisha paused as she reached for a spray bottle of plant food. 'No doubt you can, ensign. No doubt you can, and it's exactly such thoughts that under other circumstances would make sure I had you people confined to your ship.' She expressed her anger with savage squirts from the bottle. 'However, I've been ordered to co-operate with you in any way I can. So your request for shore leave is granted, on the proviso that you're not all here simultaneously.'

'We already had a rota planned.' Alvin was quite proud of himself. He'd had nothing to do with it, Lenham had taken care of the particulars but it had been his idea.

Patrisha knew that the captain had simply been prudent in his preparations but that didn't stop her from being aghast at his presumption. 'Did you now?' Her repressed disapproval forced her to put down a set of secateurs she was using to deadhead a rose bush to avoid needing another trip to the infirmary to have the tip of her thumb regrown. 'Well, that is fortunate. I'll inform our custodians to be expecting you. In our towns and cities that is, not our jail cells. I hope.'

'As do I, ma'am.' Alvin said with genuine relief as the governor moved away from her pruning implements. He'd opted not to wear his pistol and in the event of being attacked only had his derma-ceramic blade for protection. But he didn't think that dismembering or eviscerating the governor, even in self-defence, would be much appreciated by the locals.

'Excellent.' Well that wasn't so bad. It could have gone worse and if she wasn't acting under orders from Ralph then it probably would have done. 'It has also been brought to my attention that we are expecting more...guests. I assume you were going to inform of me this.'

'We sent a message requesting reinforcements shortly before we landed. The captain was going to tell you, governor, but given how you greeted us he didn't think that you would be receptive to the idea of more Imperial ships seeking safe harbour on your planet.' Elliot knew he sounded like a snitching child, he just didn't care.

'Is this young man always so outspoken?' Although she didn't much care for the boy's tone she was simultaneously relieved and envious that she didn't have men like him on her staff.

Alvin tried to maintain his dignity under the governor's scrutiny and shot a sideways glance at the ensign. 'Unfortunately.' For a second he thought he saw Elliot stick his tongue out.

'Well, it's to his credit but not exactly appropriate.' Patrisha turned away from them and watched the sun lodge itself between a pair of silos in the distance. Like a torch shone on ichor-stained remains in a shallow grave it revealed a place that was not particularly attractive. Not by Rustican standards anyway. It had the look of an old colonial-style complex; its buildings were squat and silver walled, the roads were sub-divided slabs of metal practically bolted into the ground, its water supply was still provided by large-scale solar stills that tilted towards the sun like windmills of mirrored glass. Grain dust hung in the air as transport trucks rumbled by, their heavy-tread wheels left deposits of dense dirt behind them in sporadic splashes on the roads. Unlike some of the more decorative cities, the ones that drew in visitors from all corners of the cosmos, it was a place that existed for work. Of course, there were boxes and baskets of flowers arranged carefully to brighten the place up but all in all it was rather glum. It may not have been pretty, but it was relatively quiet. The perfect place to escape from the overbearing expectations placed upon her in the capital. 'On the subject of your ships, I have also been instructed to extend them the same courtesy I have shown you.'

'That's very gracious of you.' Alvin wasn't sure if a bow was appropriate but he lowered his head in a halfway gesture of respect.

Electric lights began to blaze, their artificial rays giving the sun permission to begin its tour of duty on the other side of the planet. 'Grace has nothing to do with it, I assure you. This order comes from the throne,' or close enough to it for that to not be a lie, 'so it is not one I can countermand.'

So she must have been in contact with Earth...'Of course.'

'Of course what?'

Her change of heart made perfect sense knowing that royals had been involved. They inspired a deference that he'd never been able to understand, yet he like everyone else was equally swayed by it. Perhaps it was because of what they had once represented, some lingering unquestionable authority that had been earned and long since undeserved but passed down through the ages nevertheless. Alvin snapped out of his thoughts, 'Of course, I will make sure that my fellow captains and the crews under them fully appreciate the nature of our position here. We're guests and we should conduct ourselves as such.'

'Yes, you should and you will. Otherwise you will all find your welcome worn out. Rapidly.' The fact that the two officers hadn't dismissed themselves prompted her to ask, 'Is there anything else I can help you with?'

Alvin shuffled his feet but resisted the urge to look down like a child asking for something he knew he couldn't have. 'We were hoping that you'd allow us to take on fresh supplies whilst we're here.'

'Really? Well, why not move into my house whilst you're at it!?' Patrisha's arms rose and fell by her sides as though anger were something tangible that could be juggled.

'If you insist. I'll send word for the captain's personal effects to be transferred immediately.' Elliot reached for his communicator.

'I was being sarcastic!' Patrisha admonished the ensign with a slap on the wrist.

'Oh.' Elliot nursed his hand and looked at the governor sideways. 'I would never have guessed.'

Patrisha looked around for something to throw but decided against damaging any of her equipment or projects simply because these impudent officers were winding her up. 'Captain Spader, this is just unacceptable! It's bad enough you come asking for a list of favours but to then literally add insult to injury is beyond bare faced cheek!'

Alvin took a step back towards the stairs leading down from the roof only to find his way blocked by a trellis. 'My apologies, it won't happen again. Isn't that right, Elliot?'

'Absolutely, sir. I'm deeply sorry, Governor Tandis.' Elliot noticed Alvin's attempted retreat and likewise distanced himself from Patrisha, just in case.

'You'd better be. You can have your supplies and your shore leave, now please just go before I change my mind.' She already had but there wasn't anything she could do about it. Well there was, but she'd have to answer to Ralph for it. Besides her own communicator started to whine as the officers left, which meant she had other things to worry about.

When they arrived back on the ship Alvin sent Elliot to the warehouse deck to organise the resupply of their food stocks whilst he shut himself away in his office. He wanted to know when exactly the others would be arriving but every time he instructed the computer to open a channel it flashed an error code across the screen. That was all very well and good but it didn't exactly explain what was wrong. Sometimes he swore that hardware manufacturers intentionally made their products so obtuse in order to justify the existence of a technical support team. Luckily, Alvin had made sure that all the engineers on his ship were fully fluent in all manner of deliberately unhelpful electronic languages.

'Engineering, this is the captain. I'm trying to contact Novagrad but I can't seem to make a connection.' Alvin did his best not to sound overly frustrated as the machines in his chair piped his voice down through the ship.

'You're not the only one, sir.' Came a surly and distracted reply.

Doctor Ferndown strode into the room looking none too pleased. 'Captain, I was just about to upload my logs to the medical corps database when the line was cut. What's going on?'

Alvin waved her into a seat. 'That's what I'm about to find out, doctor.' With any luck. 'Engineering, report.'

'It's nothing to do with our systems, sir. Everything checks out fine. We could even send a telegram if we had to. As far as I can see there's an external problem.'

'What sort of problem!?'

'The kind that shouting at me over the intercom isn't likely to fix.' There was a pause but confident that he had got his point across and he wasn't about to be demoted, the engineer continued, 'All interstellar comm traffic just went dead.'

Alvin and the doctor exchanged a perplexed glance. 'What? That's impossible. Check again.'

'I am, sir. The entire trans-galactic network has been taken offline.'

Casey stood up to pace but then sat when her legs proved too unsure of themselves. 'But without the relays...'

'We're alone out here, doctor. Even more so than before.' Alvin grumbled as he shut off the line to engineering.

'Oh I wouldn't say that, captain.' Casey stood up, the strength in her limbs returned as she pointed out of the window towards a cluster of dark shapes descending through the atmosphere like the first exhausted husks of insects heralding the arrival of a plague of locusts.

Sons of the Empire, Chapter Twenty-Two

On either side of Xeli-2's primary docking bay, turrets tracked the Karenina's progress with trinitite coloured sensor orbs. They swivelled in their settings and watched the tiny ship like the shifty eyes of unsavoury locals in a tavern turning to the door at the arrival of a hooded vagrant. Behind them whirred the cogs and circuits of mechanical minds that could just as easily have run global economies as they could decide to destroy the unexpected vessel. It was fortunate for its passengers that human oversight governed any decision to engage in hostilities. As was always the case, humans had a choice as to whether or not they killed each other and all too often disguised their inability to follow the peaceful path with all manner of clever excuses. No matter how finely worded they might have been they usually just boiled down to either “you don't think the way I do, prepare to die” or “die non-believer!” Left to their own devices the computers would have opened fire whether the shuttle had appropriate access codes or not. The binary domain of digital thought, shackled as it was by the rule of the 1-0 dichotomy, was not a merciful one. The shuttle was not scheduled and so as far as the machines were concerned, it was not welcome. From the cockpit, Broge watched as people in pressure suits shooed away a crowd of drones as they paused to analyse the shuttle whilst what passed for their intelligence ran through a simulation of curiosity as to who had come to disturb their work. The gaggle of robots dispersed like a group of children herded back to class and a member of the dock staff waved the shuttle in with a pair of neon rods.

The ship's diminutive form was dwarfed by the structure that stretched above and below it. As Broge cut the main engines, the jets of seemingly solid light that propelled the shuttle vanished and were replaced with puffs of pressurised gas that killed its momentum before it nestled into the embrace of a magnetic field. After the ship was guided to a gentle stop, clamps locked themselves in place over its akimbo landing legs and a faint dusting of fading ice around the portholes, like winter tracing its fingers across ripples in a pond, indicated that exterior atmosphere had been restored. She unbuckled her safety restraints and powered down all ship's systems except the engines and what limited weapons it had. With the energy supply reduced to a dwindling stream the cockpit's buttons, switches and displays glowed dimly so that they resembled barely living bioluminescent bugs infesting a cave of antique mechanical wonders. She felt a shiver of discomfort travel up her back and through the swivel-pins holding her jaw in place. She had never been fond of insects, even imaginary ones.

Keir and the other soldiers were in the aft compartment, hastily zipping themselves into the uniforms that had been appropriated as their disguises. She'd had the common sense to change into hers whilst the auto-pilot weaved its way through the planetary debris, though she'd had to go to the storage section to do it. She may have been a soldier and accustomed to unisex conditions but a little privacy every now and then certainly didn't go amiss. No one said anything to her about it or made any boorish jokes but she attributed that to the fact that half her jaw could bite through stone than to anything else. The only one who had not switched into station apparel was Keir; his clean cut clothes were nondescript enough that he could easily pass any inspection. Their shade of grey would probably result in assumptions that he was a civilian administrator on a transfer, which was sort of true when she thought about it. But beyond that he had the look about him of someone who was not used to being questioned except by those of much higher pay grades than the people on the station were likely to be, so he'd be given a pass just for that. No one would want to risk offending him on the off chance he knew someone who could get them fired. Although, they'd have more than their jobs to worry about by the time the mission was over.

She knew that the others would likely find some excuse to turn Xeli-2's corridors into shooting galleries regardless of their orders. Her time spent in the armed forces had proven to her that if you put someone in a uniform and give them a gun, then they would use both to excuse their own violent urges. She'd once had to execute a man for killing an entire cargo hold full of children simply because their parents were corsairs. They were unarmed, non-combatants who had nothing to defend them except a radio through which they called for help. It never came. Had she been sorry to kill that soldier? Yes. He had been a good trooper up until the point that he wasn't. But as soon as he had started gunning down innocents simply because in his mind they were guilty by association, he'd forfeited his right to wear his uniform and to even be called a man. The youngest of their group, Corporal Ashcroft, reminded her a lot of that soldier. She could see the rot eating away at him already. The lines in his face were like cracks in a riverbed to which drought was an old companion; a dullness spread through his eyes as though his soul was being ossified; and when speaking to the other men he copied their mannerisms and short tempered tone like a little boy aping older brothers who couldn't really have cared less. Such a shame, she thought, such a waste.

'Hey! You're going to have to pack those further in if you expect them to make it through the scanners.' Kelly gestured to the weapons Ashcroft was half-heartedly stowing in a broad metal trunk mounted on wheels. As far as station security would be concerned it contained supplies and equipment; which is exactly what was in there except they were more along the lines of weapons, ammunition and canisters of anaesthetic gas rather than anything even remotely to do with engineering.

Ashcroft looked up at her, obviously anxious to be so berated by her in front of the others. Nevertheless he wasn't stupid enough to either insult or ignore her. 'Yes, ma'am.' He muttered in quiet acquiescence.

She noticed that his eyes were slightly bloodshot, she hoped one of the others hadn't got him hooked on something. 'There's no need for that. It's not like there's a command structure here, just call me Broge. The only orders you have to follow are his.' She nodded towards Keir, who was busy delaying the inspection team waiting to come aboard by claiming the door servos had jammed. It was a cheap ploy but it seemed to be working. She caught the tail end of a joke about broken down old skiffs as she turned back to Ashcroft and whispered with a conspiratorial wink, 'Unless they're stupid orders, in which case just stick with me.'

'OK then.' He was relieved that someone was treating him as something other than dead meat. He may have been young but he'd killed more men than he could count; still he got the impression that the others were the kind of soldiers who had never kept score in the first place. They had been made callous and bitter by their years of thankless service. Half of them had never been anything other than covert operatives and had forgotten what a life of their own was like. 'Should I wrap these rifles with tool belts? It should help disguise them better if the staff here run a visual check. Hard to find guns when they're hidden in piles of welders, spanners and pliers.'

Kelly didn't know why he was asking. It couldn't have been his first time on such a mission, he must have known how to improvise around the basics. He was probably just humouring her. 'Good idea. Carry on. Just don't hide them too well, we need to be able to find them even if they don't.'

'Understood.' Ashton gave a salute and finished his work.

Over by the access hatch Keir ran through a final rerun of the plan and reiterated the need to use non-lethal force before he sculpted his face into a passable impression of a grin and said, 'Smiles everyone. It's show time.'

After being cooped up in the shuttle for so long Kelly's eyes had trouble adjusting to the sheer amount of space around her. It looked like after the outlawing of faith all the houses of various gods had been broken down brick by brick and shipped into the galactic wilderness to be put to better use. In place of plaster and paint there were great walls of laser etched frescoes that portrayed the ascent of man from a troglodyte fleeing an atomic holocaust, to a cave-bound peon toiling in tomb-like labs all the way up until the present day where he bestrode the stars with destiny lighting the way as in one hand he clasped a book and the other a sword. No censors of incense swayed but there were instead floating robotic cuboids that recited from their collective memory the greatest surviving works of literature. Their clipped, variable intonation echoed around the docking bay like whispers from a confessional.

The inspection team was waiting for them with pistols drawn and hand scanners at the ready, but they didn't really seem invested in the task. None of them had ever been given a reason to use their weapons and the search was just a formality. But that didn't stop the one in charge of the group, a man whose height would have been intimidating if it weren't for the belly protruding over his belt, from swaggering about like he owned the place. He didn't own it, the Empire did, and he definitely wasn't the station commander. He had the over-inflated sense of self-importance but there was nothing about him that indicated his competencies stretched to anything other than following orders.

Although like all born followers he enjoyed pretending to be a leader, 'You lot, stay where you are and prepare to submit your luggage for inspection.' There was something about the tone of his voice that hinted at a distant connection to the old Romance countries, but since none of those had existed for a very long time it was an affectation he had no doubt cultivated by listening to reconstructed recordings of dead languages. Or perhaps his arrogance was carried in the blood, a way of marking out his so-called superiority for others of his kind, much like the braying laugh of the horse-faced wealthy. Such characteristics were tramp stamps flecked with diamonique, intended to help with rapid delineation of status. 'What? Don't look at me like that you know the drill!' He barked after noticing Wintergreen rolling his eyes.

'Steady on. Broge, Ashcroft open the crate.' Keir ordered. His tone was predominantly neutral with the just the right amount of boredom to suggest he'd been through spot checks a thousand times before.

'Hmm.' The inspector picked up a hefty steel cylinder from the container and tipped it end on end as if he were examining some mildly interesting but somewhat offensive objet d'art. 'What is this?' He turned to his colleagues to ask, his lips trembling with bemused contempt for the thing he held but did not understand.

'Looks an awful lot like a canister of liquid nitrogen to me.' Keir pointed out in an intentionally stating the obvious tone.

'I don't know...' The inspector was not convinced and narrowed his heavily pouched eyes in suspicion.

'Of course you don't. That's why you work security and we're engineers.' Keir brusquely replied as he examined a layout of the station on his wrist-top. He had prepared himself fully but it was always wise to check directions, he doubted he'd get a chance to stop and ask anyone in the event of getting lost.

'You could be thrown in the brig for talking to me like that.' The inspector scoffed and looked to his colleagues for affirmation of whatever authority he believed he had as they studied the results of the identity checks of the newcomers.

'No, I couldn't.' Keir swiped his identification through a hand scanner and held the results up for all the see. Of course it didn't display his real name and role but his cover was suitably high ranking enough to make the assembled security team blanch. 'By the way I wouldn't hold that canister for too long. Even with the insulated casing, prolonged contact with that stuff is enough to kill the nerves in your finger tips.'

The inspector let out a squeak which he attempted to disguise as a sneeze before he dropped the canister back into the container and rubbed his hands together. 'Well, everything seems to be in order. Move along and get to work.'

They did just that. The inspection team turned out to be the first and only hurdle they had to overcome. Which made perfect sense seeing as far as anyone else knew they belonged there. Kelly thought it odd that no one else even vaguely challenged their presence: no guards asked to verify their identities and even the computers accepted them without a query as doors parted for them like rocks splitting at the tap of a staff. No one looked at them twice, and even if they did all they saw were a few new faces; a welcome infusion of fresh blood. That didn't stop her from being nervous. This mission was no different to many others she had been assigned in her career but the endless corridors of white and silver walls, lit by bands of harsh light that pulsed through the ceiling like the warning displays of an enraged cephalopod, gave her the unshakeable impression that she was being watched. Always watched by some unfathomable intelligence, far removed from her own, that heard all, saw all, thought and knew all but just did not care that it did. There on the upper boundaries of the Empire it brooded on the boiling bulge of the galaxy which spread across the void, each star the future dream of a civilisation lost to the past. The only outward sign of her concern she allowed herself to express was a twinge in her jaw and a slight shiver. Anything else would have attracted too much attention from the others, as it was she was able to pass it off as getting used to the station's environmental defaults.

When they arrived at the atmospheric control room she was surprised by what she saw through the oculus door that opened at their approach. Where as everywhere else on board displayed an almost fetishistic obsession with precision and cleanliness, the space she helped push their crate of equipment into was a slovenly hole by comparison. Consoles were scattered around the entire room. Some were free standing and monitored by squinting technicians whose whole world had been reduced to keystrokes and command codes; their lives nothing more than an extension of the machines' will to fulfill their function. Other computers were plugged directly into pipes and conduits with their needled-tipped arachnoid limbs that directly adjusted oxygen distribution and contaminant filtration. She had seen, and been in, prison cells that were more welcoming. The whole room was suffused with a harsh purple glow that emanated from power lines embedded in the ceiling. Every surface dripped with the colour as though the place had been painted with the cast-off scraps of an absinthe-addled delusion. The staff moved like they were thigh deep in a languid liquid which when churned by their passage through it bubbled with blisters of lilac foam that burst like the sudden recollection of a lamentable moment.

Out of the mauve fuzz of static and condensation emerged a good natured and frankly relieved looking woman who greeted them at the door. 'You're early. We weren't expecting you until next month.' Maybe she'd finally be able to take some leave, or at least spend some time finishing off that biomimetic gel portrait of her team.

'Well, you know what the Science Directorate is like.' Keir ushered the rest of them into the room as he stepped aside for the container. 'Its left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.' Indeed some of its workings were so complex that not even those who devised them knew much about what was going on. Advancement in the S.D was often based on if you knew anything rather than what or who you knew.

'True enough.' As she noticed Keir rooting around in the crate for something he'd obviously misplaced she asked, 'Is there a problem?'

Where in the name of Sol was that space-be-damned gun? Ah there! 'Not really.' Keir said with a wolfish flash of his teeth as he stood up, pistol in hand and shot the woman with a pacification round at point blank range.

The sight of her falling on the spot like a tower during a controlled demolition was all the cue the others needed. They drew their weapons from the crate and opened fire. Kelly rarely felt anything when pulling a trigger. It was the only way to go into combat and come out of it with her sanity intact. At that moment, she existed in a state of enforced disassociation where action did not correspond to intent. But that wasn't combat, it wasn't even a fight. Her targets didn't even manage to get a shot off before they were put down. The technicians slumped at their posts or sprawled across the floor, their limbs twitched erratically and their faces contorted as the pacification rounds blasted their central nervous systems with spikes of low intensity current. She wondered if it hurt more than actually being shot. It looked like it and that was probably the point. Suppression weapons weren't just designed to neutralise a threat, they were meant to punish those who stood against the ones holding guns and those who gave the orders to use them; to condition their victims, through pain, into seeing how wrong they were. But these people weren't at fault, they were just in the way. She reminded herself that she was shooting ordinary people, not criminals. It was the accompanying feeling of guilt that allowed her to maintain control; her face was frozen by professional detachment whilst the others, even Ashcroft, seemed to be enjoying themselves. She felt her stomach turn and saw her own distaste taken to its logical extreme by the ruthless passivity of Keir's own expression.

Once the bodies stopped shaking and were secured with lengths of high-tensile cable torn out from an exposed section of piping in the floor, Keir lifted the canisters out of the container and attached them to the filtration systems. Disabling the safe guards was a simple enough matter, almost too simple for her liking. The security software just seemed to give way to his commands and no warning klaxons sounded in response to his tampering. She knew better than to ask how or why so she kept an eye on the surveillance cameras that watched the nearby corridors. No one was coming for them and no alarm had been triggered. The compound in the canisters had been specifically formulated to cause virtually instantaneous unconsciousness in those exposed to it and she supposed that no one even had time to alert security before they were dropped into the land of the lullaby. Keir had been right. They'd stuck to the plan and everything was working out. So far. Gauges on the sides of the canisters changed from green to red as the anaesthetic compound was injected into the air supply. At a nod from Wintergreen they put on their re-breathers so that the wispy mist drifting around the station like fumes from a warlock's cauldron wouldn't put them under its spell.

The masks made them look like mouthless things summoned up from the depths of a netherworld, their rasping breaths were muffled screams woven about them like ectoplasmic cloaks as they stalked through the hallways to the control centre. Along the way they passed unconscious crew collapsed in the corridors like toys tossed aside by fickle children. She hoped that Keir had set the intermix of the gas at the right level, otherwise what looked like a rather pleasant if awkwardly posed slumber would turn out to be a permanent repose for anyone who caught a lungful of the anaesthetic gas. The peace of such a sleep was something that Kelly began to envy as she thought about the assault on the command centre where the unsuspecting staff were still going about their work.

Well, most of them were but two less-than-essential personnel had occupied themselves with other more pressing concerns.

'Have you seen Revenge of the Undead Moon?' A junior controller asked his nearby colleague.

'Not yet, but I've been meaning to. I've heard it's good. Not as good as the original, obviously, but worth a watch at least.'

'It...is...incredible. I've never seen anything like it.'

He always got over-hyped about films, which was a sure fire way of being disappointed. It was far more sensible never to expect anything, that way if you got even the tiniest hint of something good then it would be a pleasant surprise. 'Maybe I'll patch into the grid and see it later.'

'OK, but be careful. It's not on general release yet so don't let anyone track your stream.'

'Please! It's me. Not even I can track myself.'

'That's what you said last time I used your access point. Commander Fellner almost demoted me when he saw what I'd been downloading.'

'What was it?' His co-worker wasn't sure if he should be intrigued or concerned.

He didn't get the chance to find out. They watched with curiosity as a small metal sphere bounced down the stairs and landed at their feet. Curiosity instantly turned to fear as they realised what it was. But before they had time to react a burst of light turned the room the colour of bleached bones on a planet with three suns. Everyone in the vicinity closed their eyes but that wasn't enough, the light blasted through their eyelids as though Helios himself had disrobed before them. First came the flash, then the bang as sonic emitters thrown outwards in tiny clouds by the detonation made the air vibrate. The station crew fell to their knees clutching the sides of their heads as it felt as though their ear drums would collapse in on themselves like the frozen cores of dead stars. Then the shooting started.

Kelly and the others may have only been armed with stun rounds but the station's crew were under no obligation to preserve the lives of their attackers. But live ammunition was no deterrent for her or the others, especially not as the sensory onslaught from the grenade had made it virtually impossible for the defenders to see straight or hear orders to co-ordinate effective retaliation. Bullets impacted harmlessly in walls and computers as the crew took blind pot shots at the blobs of shadow that phased in and out of existence in their temporarily ruined eyes. Fire fights were where the soldiers earned their crust and they'd seen death too many times for its spectre to hold much fear for them. Instead they approached the situation with a level of detachment that if they were employed in another profession would have been classified as borderline psychopathy. Slowly but surely they neutralised their targets and the room fell silent save for the sound of muffled gibbering.

She secured the door as the others made certain that the station personnel were all unconscious. Those that weren't received sharp blows to the back of the head until they shared the same sweet oblivion of dreams. Keir approached the console that interfaced with the entire communications network. It was a multi-tiered machine of pipes, speakers and sine wave displays like the body of a mechanical monstrosity dredged up from the darkest recesses of a nightmare that should have been forgotten. Out of it came the occasional hiss of a transmission marked for investigation. So many secrets could be learned if only he had time to listen, but given his occupation he probably knew them all already anyway. Kelly noted that same improbable ease of access the computers allowed him. It seemed that they wanted to do his bidding, even though it contradicted every line of their programming, just for the chance of doing something different. Inevitably he turned the machines against themselves, their deepest inner workings were corrupted by his re-coding and everything they had been built to maintain was torn down by their own intangible hands.

His work complete, Keir turned to the network monitoring display and watched as one by one the lights of civilisation began to go out. When the war began distress calls would be sent but without the relays to accelerate them, such signals would be lost in time to echo through the void like the howling of a purgatorial symphony. In ages to come, historians would listen to them through radio telescopes like mediums coaxing conversations from ghosts at a séance.