“Where the hell is everyone, Bouteil?”

“Good question, sir.”

“I swear, it’s like some people have no respect for … what is it? What am I looking for here?” He snapped his fingers. “Conundrum. Concord.”

“Decorum, sir?”

“There we go. It’s infuriating.”

“It is certainly a discouraging set of circumstances, sir.”

The two men were walking around in the arrivals area of a Customs Office. Upon approach their ship had been automatically towed close to the Office and locked in place beside it, and a boarding ramp had been extended, attached and pressurized, all with the same automation. The sole voice they’d heard had been the recorded message welcoming them to the Office and asking that they present their business to the local authorities at their earliest convenience.

Gister had been the first to enter, holding a datapad in one hand like a trophy. He was a tall, brisk man who carried with him a sense of purpose so potent it seemed barely containable by his personality. He gave the impression that he cheerfully walked his own path and would continue to do so even if it led him through a brick wall.

Bouteil had come in after him, at a respectable distance. He was Gister’s personal assistant, tall as well, and dressed in dark clothes that could have been styled in any of the four empires. He gave the impression that he would cheerfully, if rather quietly, have a word with the brick wall beforehand and successfully change its mind about certain minor but important details pertaining to rigidity and cooperation.

No one else had followed; the ship’s crew had orders to wait until such point as Gister considered his tour of the facilities concluded, after which he intended to return to his vessel and fly away again.

“Really,” Gister said, looking around as he walked. “You would’ve thought that when it came to officiating our agreement, the old guard would at least stick around to hand things over. Not just leave everything and run.”

“It does seem they made rather a hazardous departure,” Bouteil ventured.

The two men made it to the exit of the lounge, and entrance into the Customs Office proper.

“Well, times are changing, Bouteil,” Gister said. “If people are not willing to change with them, or even, indeed, welcome them with open arms and perhaps-” he gave the empty lounge a disapproving look, and sniffed, “even an open bottle of something, then yes, I suppose it is best they say their quiet farewells and damn well be gone before the future moves in.”

“A good extended metaphor, sir. Very true to life.”

“Yes, thank you, I do rather think so.” Gister walked down the hallway that connected egress points to the central arrival hub, followed by Bouteil a few steps after. The hall widened into a larger one with windows on one side, showing the dark stars beyond.

Gister slowed his step, looked out one of the windows and gave a contented sigh. “We made it here, Bouteil. InterBus, that is. And about damn time, too.”

“It could indeed be said, sir, that your moment had arrived in situ.”

“Precisely, Bouteil! One must be situated to move, to rush headlong into new dangers. Just as interBus has done through the years, when we haven’t been hampered by capsuleers.” He slowed to a full stop, knitted his hands behind his back, and glared out the window, as if taking a stand against the stars. “Honestly, Bouteil. Honestly!”

“Indeed, sir.”

“We’re formed by the four great empires. We’re given a charter, asked to risk our lives transporting people and goods. We brave pirates, natural phenomena, other transport companies, and the endless convolutions of interstellar politics. And then … nothing. Stagnation. Regression. Capsuleers.”

The stars stared back.

“Capsuleers,” Gister repeated to himself. “Good gods, how did those beasts ever enter the picture?”

“Hard to say, sir.”

“We were supposed to be the future, Bouteil. An integral part of inter-empire communication and conveyance. Anything more substantial than a message, than a bundle of electrons dancing in the ether, was to be ours to hold and convey. When I thought of the future, every potential route the known world could take, I could not picture it without us at the forefront. I really couldn’t.”

“I recall, sir.”

“I don’t know where it went so wrong.” Gister said, looking for a moment positively downcast. He stepped forth and raised his hand to the cold glass. “We did the work that was requested of us. We honored every single political contract we were given, and practically every one of the personal ones we acquired. It took time, but we really were poised to take over the couriering of every single package between every point in outer space.”

“So we were, sir. Until the capsuleers came.”

“Yes.” Gister lowered his hand, so that it hung limply by his side. “Why bother signing five layers of security contracts, and undertaking any number of extra costs for insurance, damages and all the other risks of doing business in dark, empty space, when you can just toss your package in the lap of an agent and have her hail an immortal pilot to transfer it, or put it up for open transfer auction with the very same people? They made a mockery of us, Bouteil. They managed to associate our name, which was known throughout New Eden, with the perennial image of has-beens.” The last part came out as a hissed whisper.

Bouteil said nothing. After a moment or two, he cleared his throat.

The noise shook Gister out of his reverie. He took a deep breath, and smiled at the stars. “Well! And here we are now. A wonderful, wonderful deal has been struck, and interBus is finally going to get back on the map.” He hefted his datapad and stroked its silver lining, then turned and began walking down the hall again. “I have to say, I do admire how perfectly auto-operated these facilities appear to be. Tell you what, before we head over to Administration, let’s take a ramble through their storage areas, see how everything ticks over. I’m dying to know how they’re handling all those types of cargo they get sent up from planetside.”

“As you wish, sir.”

“I do hope there’ll at least be someone waiting in Administration. I had a speech prepared and everything.”

“Yes, I know, sir.”

The two men walked down the corridor.

***

“So what’s the word, Bouteil?”

“Well, sir, storage E was neat and well-cleaned just as the others.”

“And everything fully operational?”

“Yes, sir. All machinery is in perfect operation and has clearly been well-maintained. I do have to note, though, that while they have clearly taken meticulous care with their hazardous materials, which have apparently been stored here for some time, there are signs that other, more recent arrivals have been treated rather more haphazardly.”

“What, slacking in standards just because there’s new management incoming? Surely not!”

“No, sir. Everything was perfectly stowed, and all the machinery in place for maintaining fragile or organic storage material is working just as intended.”

Gister furrowed his brow. “So what’s the problem, Bouteil?”

“The problem, sir, is that machinery onboard a small establishment such as this can only go so far in balancing the precarious state of certain materials before a human touch becomes a necessity. I’m saying that not too long ago, the people here left their food to rot.”

“What a completely odd situation,” Gister said. “You’d think we were pirates or somesuch.”

“I don’t like it one bit, sir. I took the liberty of hailing our vessel, and they have not heard a word from any of the registered staff on this office, no matter where they may now be located. Moreover, I would say that the Customs authorities are purposefully ignoring our own crew’s requests to track down any past member of staff.”

“Really, Bouteil? Just handed over the keys and ran?”

“It does appear so, sir.”

Gister sighed. “I believe I understand the situation.”

“Do you, sir?” Bouteil said, in a tone which did not entirely hold complete conviction.

“Come, take a look.” Gister walked off to storage area A, the sole one that he himself had inspected.

When they arrived, Gister immediately headed down a metal walkway that was suspended some distance over the storage area itself. He walked for some time, with his assistant easily keeping pace, until at last he slowed, and waved a hand over the entire collection. Cargo blocks, of uniform size, stretched out both ways to some distance.

“Solidification,” Gister said. “That’s what they ran away from.”

“They did, sir?”

“See all those blocks down below? You know what they remind me of?”

“I couldn’t fathom, sir.”

“Fuel.”

“Sir?”

“You know interBus keeps a close eye, or at least I personally keep a close eye, on scientific developments that might pertain in any way, shape or form to interstellar transport. You know what’s the most recent technological breakthrough of New Eden?”

Bouteil gave this a moment of thought. “Would that be the recent advances in what they call hybrid weapons technology, whereby the overall improvements in vessel types, actual weapons, and even the ammunition itself are believed to give ships for the Gallente Federation a notable up in the stakes of interstellar dominance?”

“What? No!”

“Ah, then I believe sir may be referring to the new types of weaponry available to capsuleers of all empires, including but not limited to power cores, drone tracking devices, siege and triage modules, and even an improvement on the unobtrusive but important tractor beam.”

Gister stood agape, but rallied quickly. “Well, there is that, yes. Though really, Bouteil, I have to say, even for you that’s a little short-sighted. All that’s been done is the capsuleers are being powered up so they can destroy each other better. Which is perfect, I should say, because it only helps take their attention away from the proper business of running the world.”

“Would that be the one we are involved in, sir?”

“Well, of course. Haven’t you paid any attention to the rise of interBus?”

“Oh, I have, sir. In miniscule detail.”

Gister looked back to the crates. “At any rate. Fuel. For capsuleer-run starbases, because those grubby little maniacs apparently have to have their hands in every operational part of space. You’re familiar with those?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you know the sheer amount of fuel these starbases have to use?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Coolant, oxygen, robotic parts, various mechanical pieces,” Gister said, entirely undaunted, “even crazy things like isotopes, liquid ozone, and enriched uranium. Uranium. Can you imagine? I’d have thought those were the stations where the crew couldn’t wait to up and leave.”

“I’m sure people are getting impatient everywhere, sir.”

Gister wagged a finger in front of Bouteil. “But not anymore. They simplified things, in a beautiful move. Now it’s just blocks. That’s it. A single source of matter, though of course I’m sure the empires will find some way of putting their stamp on things, and that single source of matter comes in single, perfect blocks. Just like all the ones down here. Stackable, storable, perfectly cubed blocks. Ripe for the right mind to strike a deal over. They couldn’t hack it, the customs people. Everyone knew it. CONCORD knew it. That’s why we were offered a takeover deal of all these offices outside highsec, with no notice. They knew we’d have the stomach for it, when no one else would.”

He gazed over the landscape of squares down below, holding his datapad close, and gave a contented sigh. “Portable blocks. That’s the kind of advances in science we like. Not all this tech-two rubbish, kowtowing to the madmen of the skies.”

“You think they really are mad, sir?” Bouteil said, in a carefully neutral tone that indicated his own opinion might go either way.

“They’re insane, man. I mean, seriously. They have to be. How can you be blown up that often and not just be disjointed from the world?”

“An excellent question, sir. Though not one that I’d venture to openly ask.”

“Why not? What do we possibly have to fear from these people?”

“Well, sir, they are wealthy enough to have my entire family tree eliminated from existence, up to and including some very distant cousins that I barely even get a letter from these days.”

***

“It’s all about war versus business, keeping the two separate,” Gister said, as they walked away from the storage areas. He’d gotten tired of inspecting the station and wanted to make one last pass through the previous administration’s offices before launching the official interBus office occupation and getting back to his ship.

“Indeed, sir?”

“You don’t sound very convinced,” Gister said to him.

“Well, sir,” Bouteil ventured, as they passed into an elevator that would take them up to the administrative floors, “it’s more that I always believed the two were rather tightly knit together. A military-industrial complex, as it were, with capsuleers at its very crux.”

Gister turned to him with eyes wide open. “Good heavens, man! The capsuleers can’t even keep their own alliances intact for longer than a fortnight.”

The elevator doors opened onto an area with much brighter lighting than the one below, and the two men stepped into an area shorn of iron and bare steel, all replaced with plastics and glass.

Gister continued, “And speaking of alliances, I’ve heard that those ragtag things will now be allowed to join the empire wars en masse. Which is wonderful! That’s all they’re good for, fighting and war. Best to put their focus on something like that, and not have them getting in the way of people trying to do proper business.”

“People like you, sir?”

“Precisely. That’s what I mean with war versus business. You let those people have at it, shooting one another, but you keep their activities couched well within the box of war. Meanwhile, business takes care of its own self, uninterrupted. No capsuleers jumping in to fulfill contracts, courier items around, destroy caravans that happen to carry our cargo, or otherwise bother us with their presence in the world. And the world is catching up.”

“Is it, sir?” Bouteil enquired. A control panel nearby attracted his attention, and he took a few steps toward it.

Gister, who was too preoccupied with inner visions to notice, stared skywards and said, “It is! The sad things can’t even blow themselves up anymore. You hadn’t heard? CONCORD finally had enough of them, and cut short their insurance.”

“Only when they intentionally self-destruct, surely,” Bouteil said without looking. He reached the panel and, with his back intentionally to his superior, performed a few deft moves involving an illicit signage key he procured from his pocket. The panel came to life, and lists of recent communiques began scrolling in front of him.

“Yes, yes, but the point stands,” Gister said, waving the silver datapad in his direction. “The business world is slowly having its fill of capsuleers, and of the endless, unyielding, messy wars they always seem to be engaged in. The business world doesn’t like that. No sir. We prefer things crisp, clean, and, er…”

“Block-shaped, sir?” Bouteil said absent-mindedly, as he browsed through the communiques.

“Precisely! Even now, Bouteil, you and I, we’ve travelled deep into what they call a low-security sector of New Eden, all so we can observe a proper ceremonial handover of responsibility. Leaving aside the fact that nobody on the other end had the good grace to uphold their part of the bargain, it was, nonetheless, a bargain, with clear lines of conduct. Just think of how the Minmatar are finally sorting themselves out, concluding all that government nonsense at long last.” He poked at the datapad, as if illuminating its brilliance. “Organization, you see. Once people get organized, we have civilization. Business moves on, and interBus finally has a chance to move with it.”

He glared at Bouteil, who was standing absolutely immobile by the communications panel. “Are you listening, man?” Gister barked at him.

“I have been, sir, without reprieve,” Bouteil said, and straightened up. “And I have discovered some minor niggles in the contract between interBus and CONCORD that I believe deeply concern us at this very moment. If you could just bear with me, sir, and withhold from activating the interBus occupation of this and other stations.”

“Bouteil, I will not have you spoil this moment, not when I’ve waited so long for it. What in the world is going on?”

“Just a second, sir.”

“Hesitation. There is no room for it in the business world, Bouteil. As my personal assistant, I thought you were aware of that.” He held the datapad in front of him. “Well,” he continued, “I might as well prove it by example.”

Bouteil rose and faced him. “No, sir, don’t-”

With swift movement, Gister entered his personal key, activated the datapad, and signed the digital handover document. “There! See? Nothing to fear, everything to gain.”

Immediately, every monitor on every work station in the office blinked, then rendered the black and orange interBus logo.

“Transfer complete,” Gister said proudly. “It’s all ours now.”

Bouteil walked swiftly toward his boss. “If you would follow me at once, please, sir.”

“Bouteil, I will not have you rush me, either. Explain yourself.”

Bouteil barely paused to grasp Gister by the arm with a very strong grip, and as he led the startled man toward the elevator he said, “There was a loophole in the contract and now that you’ve signed it there are some people coming to take advantage of our situation.”

“What? What are you talking about?” Gister demanded.

“I believe business and war may be rather more intertwined than you believed, sir. The upkeep of these stations is our responsibility as of now, but it, and everything else, may still be claimed by force.”

“The empires wouldn’t dare-”

“It is not the empires I’m concerned with. We are going to take the elevator directly down to the arrivals area, sir, and I’ve called up two escape pods in case we don’t make it all the way to our ship.”

Gister was herded into the elevator, where he leaned up against one of its walls and said, “Explain yourself!”

As they whooshed down, Bouteil looked him in the eyes and said, “The capsuleers are coming, sir, and I believe it is not interBus’s day at all. In fact, sir, once these elevator doors open, I advise you to run.”

They got up while it was still cold and blue, and as the desert sands warmed to scorching temperatures they dug for the Book. Akran presided over the excavation, giving out directions that went mostly unheeded, while Skar pitched in with his men and gave them the orders they obeyed. In the afternoon the heat was alleviated a little by increasing gusts of wind, but the relief was short-lived. By early evening the winds had picked up, visibility was dropping, and clouds had started to pile up on the horizon. The sand got into everything, and all nonessential conversation faded away as the diggers focused on the ground, their mouths pinched shut and their eyes narrowed to slits.

The weather got progressively worse. Skar began to wonder whether it was a sign that they were in the wrong place, or even if they should not be there at all. The soldiers did their best to shore up what had at first been a deepening hole but was increasingly turning into a well. Akran was clearly worried that if they discovered the Book the rain would damage it, and paced around muttering to himself. The entire thing seemed on all levels to be turning into useless sludge.

It was just before midnight, as the winds had turned to gales and the rain was pelting them from all sides, that the soldier at the bottom of the hole stopped digging and began waving to the people up top. Skar was called over, then Akran, and together they stood in open-mouthed amazement as the soldier called for ropes to be tossed down, and for more light, more light.

They worked at it with the fervor of the terrified, pulling because they didn’t dare stop, not even slowing when one soldier pulled so hard he lost his footing and slid into the hole. He hadn’t broken anything, he shouted, though he might have twisted his ankle, but it seemed to Skar that the rest of them wouldn’t have cared either way. Skar was terrified, too, and felt sick to his stomach.

Eventually the ropes were affixed and the bounty pulled up to ground level. It was a box about half the size of a man, made of metal and varnished with a solid, opaque coating that Skar wasn’t familiar with. He only had a moment to regard it before Akran shouldered him aside to get to the box, and he smiled despite himself, happy that someone in the group was so excited at the discovery. His stomach felt made of lead. The box shouldn’t have been here, or anywhere except in the text of the scriptures.

Before Akran could do anything foolish, Skar ordered the soldiers to haul the box into camp. One of the soldiers asked if it should go into Skar’s tent, but Skar shook his head and ordered it placed in Akran’s. He saw on their faces that they agreed with the decision, even if it was edging off protocol; Akran was fairly hopping about in eagerness while the rest of the troops were exhausted. In truth, Skar wanted the thing in Akran’s tent because he knew he’d get no peaceable sleep if it were in his own.

The troops dragged the box into the academic’s tent, where it dripped mud and wet sand onto the floor. They left it there and marched out wordlessly, leaving Akran hunched over the box in rapt fascination and Skar standing behind him not quite knowing what to do next. His dilemma was resolved when Akran asked him to pry open the box.

“I’m sorry?”

“This box. I need it opened. I believe we have a pry bar somewhere in the toolbox.” He waved at a large bag sitting in a corner of his tent. The troops had taken turns carrying it.

Skar couldn’t help himself. “Are you sure you should be doing this?”

Akran gave him a gently admonishing look. “This is why we are here, soldier. Pry it open, please.”

“Is there even a faultline?” Skar said, feeling like a child trying to avoid going to bed.

The academic pointed at a thin line that circumscribed the middle of the box. “Halfway through. So long as you hit it on the mark the seal will give, with no damage to the box.”

“Should you be doing this? If the … if the Book is located inside, it might be affected by any number of things. The wind, the humidity in the air, anything. It should be taken out in a -”

“Safe, nice research institute where a lot of boring old men will pore over its covers until the end of time without ever opening the damned thing,” Akran said. “Open the box, please.”

Skar saw no choice but to obey. He retrieved the pry bar and held it in his hands, regarding the box and Akran, who had stooped over again to study its inscriptions. Skar stood like that for a moment, lost in dark thought, then cleared his throat and let the academic step aside before he started working on the faultline.

The seal cracked easily, and Skar stood back in confusion before realizing that of course he’d need to help Akran lift the lid off. He made his hands be still before grasping the lid and holding tight, putting as much effort into it as he could without embarrassing the thin and reedy academic holding on the other end. It felt good to use his strength on the box, even if it also felt a fair bit sacrilegious.

Once the lid was off, he made himself look inside, hoping against hope he would see emptiness.

The box contained another box, this one made of marble and decorated with impossibly ornate carvings. Skar looked at them for a few moments and felt something in his mind begin to drain away, but the gale of the wind and the patter of the rain brought him back to normal. The marble box also had a faultline in the centre but was not sealed, and Skar felt his eyes drawn to one of its corners, where a brownish piece of scroll poked out. A small, tattered piece of the Book of Emptiness, poking its edges into this world.

Skar walked out swiftly, marched a few steps behind the tent, vomited quietly, and walked back into the tent. Akran didn’t seem to notice.

“Now that you have it, what are you going to do?” Skar said, keeping his voice as clear as he could. “Open the second box?”

“No. I was almost certain that there’d be a second container inside, and I wanted to see what it was like. The piece of scroll poking out is certainly fortunate, so I’m going to snip off a tiny bit and put it to some tests. Other than that, I’ll be focusing on the box, documenting some of its decorations for future study, and doing some initial tests on the sealant to make sure it’s as old as it should be. I don’t expect to sleep much tonight,” he added with a wry grin.

“So you won’t be studying the book,” Skar said.

“Not until tomorrow.” Akran nodded towards another well-stuffed bag in a tent corner. “I’ll have your men set up the surgical tent, the resealable one with the sterile inner cover, and I’ll look into it then. Imagine that. It will be in our hands tomorrow. Just think what new truths it might hold!”

“There are no new truths,” Skar said weakly, but Akran had already turned back to the box. Seeing he was no longer needed, Skar turned and headed back to his tent.

He made ready to go to sleep, but couldn’t concentrate. He was good at keeping his mind focused on the task at hand – and after having found religion, he had become very good indeed at letting go of all interfering thoughts – but his mind was fast becoming a blur now, and he wasn’t sure what to do. The Book shouldn’t exist, he felt. It shouldn’t exist on any level, because its mere presence brought the Lord into this physical world where He had no business being.

The Book was wrong, and Akran was wrong, and this whole thing was wrong.

Skar lay on his blanket, feeling the cold from the midnight sand seep into his bones.

He couldn’t get those marble carvings out of his mind. The grooves that twisted and turned in on themselves, like snakes eating their tails. The knots and curlicues that looked like words but on closer inspection would dissolve into abstract symbols the likes of which he’d never seen in scripture.

And that piece of scroll sticking out, as if trying to squeeze its way from some terrible beyond and into this world, right into Skar’s own head.

He turned to one side, then turned to the other, and then lay on his back, staring at the roof of his tent, unseeing and near panic.

Years ago, when he’d buckled and become faithful at last, his fall into faith had been terrifying and liberating all at once. He remembered that feeling, though he rarely thought of it. There had been a moment of quiet realization, where he understood that he had made up his mind long ago, and had merely to let his actions catch up with him.

He lay there on his bed, sleepless and unquiet of mind, and wondered what else he was waiting to do.

***

“The academic is dead.”

The soldier assembly stared at him. It was dawn. Skar stood in front of Akran’s tent.

“We need to prepare the corpse for transport,” he said. “I want two volunteers to unwrap the surgical tent and convert it into a shroud. It’s careful work, and if anyone has a problem with the next part – which you all know what’ll be – you’re better off abstaining. The rest fills in the pit, preps for leave, and gets some rest. We leave at sundown.”

Two men got up and wordlessly walked past Skar and into Akran’s tent. Skar followed them.

The academic lay on the floor. His skin was white and his lips were blue. There was no blood and no visible signs of the cause of death. The soldiers got to work on taking the wrapped tent to pieces without disturbing its disinfected surfaces. Akran had good standing in Amarr society, and transporting his body for several days in the desert’s sweltering heat wouldn’t do anyone’s career any good.

“We’re leaving him in here until tonight,” Skar said. “I will assemble his things and say the rites.”

The soldiers nodded and finished making the shroud. Together with Skar they wrapped up Akran’s body, sealing him inside the shroud as tightly as possible. The mummification was vital but had to be done right. Loose ends during transport could unravel the entire mission.

Once the dead man’s body was taken care of, the two soldiers left the tent. Skar remained, looking around and deciding what to do next. The rites were important, but they needed to be said with a clear mind. Despite his professional demeanour, he wasn’t anywhere near that point.

Akran was dead. Akran was dead, and the Book of Emptiness lay inside this room.

Skar considered setting fire to it, but broke off that chain of thought. There was heresy, and there was worse.

He walked over to the marble box, which lay unopened on a makeshift workbench. The corner of scroll still stuck out from one side. Akran had not gotten to cut his piece from it. Skar felt remorse about that, for some reason.

The box lay completely still, of course, but the carvings on it made it appear to be writhing.

Skar wondered about faith, and about tests of faith.

He breathed deep, then reached out, lifted off the top of the box, took hold of the scroll inside with both hands, lifted it out and began to read.

***

It was written in the old tongue, but made sense in the hyperreal way that dated texts sometimes do, where you understand their meaning without even being able to comprehend their precise grammar or flow of thought. The content was a litany of truths, at first establishing the base precepts for a foundation of philosophy, then the cornerstones of the same foundation. As Skar read he noticed the sentences getting progressively shorter, the grammar turning not so much cryptic as purely alien; words were placed together that shouldn’t have been, but that now far better conveyed a higher meaning. The sentences kept getting shorter as the concepts they described got at one time more abstract and more specific, adding complexity not only to the concepts but the interplay between them. Old ideas would reappear in new forms that affected not only the text surrounding them but chapters that had passed much earlier, including the original concepts themselves in an infinite recursion. The handwriting changed, too; words began to mesh, loops and protruberances changed to mirror versions of themselves, and individual letters were extended, skewed or even drawn only in part. Skar’s mind raced to keep up with the flow of information, but it was not even a conscious effort. Once the philosophy inevitably turned to God, Skar began referencing its message to what he remembered from scriptures. Again he found he didn’t have to think about it; it happened automatically, in some part of his mind he could not reach. Information came in, unfiltered by sense or synapse, and understanding flowed out in increasing amounts, undeniable and unstoppable. The sentences melded into whole words, multisyllabic and complex, each of them stating truths Skar had barely imagined before. The words became shorter and more ornate, taking on varying dimensions. There would be one that he knew was truth, and another that was the afterlife, and justice, and physicality. They did not so much reveal new truths as remind him of what he’d always known but filtered out. The words became more and more wavy. They looked as if they were writhing on the page. Skar rubbed his eyes but it didn’t help. It was almost as if he kept reading even when they were closed. The words had turned into abstract symbols. They had no recognizable lettering. All there was on the page were lines and dashes. But they managed to convey their essence to Skar. He kept reading and the symbols began to dissolve. Their lines separated and took on their true meanings. All were unfettered of interfering context. Each line had been boiled down to its barest essence. Each line held the undeniable meaning of a concept. There was Fire. There was Cold. He saw Black Mountain. A dark Sea. A Flight. This Freedom. This Truth. An Honesty. A Death.

And as Skar came to the end of the scroll he felt everything inside of him give way, understanding brought to the barest essence at which nothing could stand between you and the truth, and in which your only possible claim to have read and understood the Book of Emptiness was to deny it, to kill it, to go beyond it and into the realm of pure knowledge and being. Skar said out loud, “I have not read the Book of Emptiness,” and it was true; he had not, for the Book now represented only yet another obstacle on the path he had been on all his life until reaching this end, this breakthrough, this apostasy; and denying it was as tantamount to ascendancy as refusing the rest of the world’s hold on him. He felt himself on the edge of reality itself, pressing against it, pushing through and feeling himself in the other end as a different creation he had been, a second person, as you would feel when you left behind the final words and rose beyond reality as it was, seeing it objectively, not as a god of creation but a god of spirit, an observer through whose thoughts the world is created. You let go of your tenuous grip and move further, completely beyond that reality and to a place it can never follow you, a place of godliness and an infinite melancholy of realization, leaving nothing behind but the symbols and the world that now has become its inverse and is merely the fading embers of an imagined thought, your imagined thought, fading away, approaching the end, and now gone at last.

Uplifted

Anyone who happened to be watching the exact point in space would only have seen a slight visual distortion against the stars. In the blink of an eye, the gravitational force of a star was generated over just a few short kilometers, compressing the fabric of space-time into a temporary singularity. The reverberation of that mass, when the remote graviton pulse wave that had tricked the physical laws of the universe subsided, produced a connection between two non-corresponding locations in the universe: a wormhole.

The event horizon immediately set off early warning sensors on the world below, basking in the radiance of its warm, yellow sun. Local forces were mobilized, but before they could act, the Sansha auto-replicating virus batch was already relayed and being broadcast from every major structure in the system ? stargates, stations, and even planetary networks. The invasive programming quickly overwhelmed the inferior systems of the civilian infrastructure, local garrisons, and, though they would not admit it, most of the Gallente Federation’s navy ships.

Then the wormhole let out a searing burst of white light, and they came through, bulbous metallic vessels covered in wicked, uneven spines. Hundreds poured from the shimmering portal, covering light years of distance in a single instant to cloud the skies above the helpless planet. Almost fishlike, darting in loose formation and changing direction simultaneously, they spread out in all directions. With synchronized releases of focused electromagnetic blasts, they smoothly wiped all defensive structures and communications satellites from orbit. For many people on the surface, the sudden glare of golden laser beams lancing across the night sky was the first sign that Sansha’s Nation had arrived.

When it had secured the entire lower orbital altitude, the armada held position until a second wave of ships emerged from the wormhole. These new vessels were different, though, lacking the bulky warp drives that took up so much space in the combat vessels; instead, their cavernous cargo holds had a very specific purpose, housing rows and rows, layer upon layer of holding cells designed to store humanoid “passengers.” The ships dropped through the atmosphere unimpeded, by squadrons, a perfectly orchestrated meteor shower.

The hypnotizing spectacle of the massive bronze ships, still glowing from the heat of atmospheric entry, turned to panic as they slowed to hover several hundred meters above the ground. A horrible grinding rolled forth from each one as gigantic bay doors slid open, unleashing a barely visible cloud of buzzing creatures that glittered as they caught the light. Undetectable except in vast quantities, these tiny cybernetic parasites drifted down over every population center, almost weightless, wafting in through unshielded windows, exposed ventilation systems, even exhaust ports that lacked the proper filters used on more densely populated worlds.

Before the victims below could understand what was happening, the nanites had already passed through the outer layer of skin, navigated the bloodstream, and attached themselves to the base of their spinal cords. When enough of the insidious little things had amassed in a single person, they begin to emit rhythmic electrical pulses ? not enough to disrupt higher brain functions, but more than enough to overpower the simple neural pathways below the neck. People screamed and shouted, struggled in vain, and cried pitifully for help, but their bodies wouldn’t respond. They walked out into the green tinted glare of wide-angle tractor beams, which lifted them off the ground by the thousands. Their bodies tumbled slowly, out of control, up into the waiting dropships.

But then the dark sky lit up with different colors. Sparkling blue explosions and brilliant red contrails streaked across the night. The capsuleers had arrived.

Arriving sporadically at first, then in greater numbers and with more organization, they warped onto the battlefield in high orbit above the planet and opened fire with reckless voracity. Their ships’ advanced electronics systems and powerful defensive measures shrugged off the Nation’s viral broadcast, allowing them to unleash a hail of guided missiles, artillery slugs, and incorruptible attack drones. They punished the Sansha vessels with their assault, but suffered a coordinated counterattack as the invading fleet systematically chose one target at a time, focusing all of its considerable firepower against the unfortunate subject.

Sensing the imminent danger to their ground operation, the dropships began to lift off of the surface all at once, not quite full yet, taking tens of thousands of citizens with them. They rocketed back up through the atmosphere on solid fuel jets, back to the safety of the wormhole. Stray weapons fire from both sides caused more than a few of them to explode, get knocked hopelessly off course, or suffer hull breaches, sending thousands of paralyzed humans spiraling out into space.

For over an hour the battle raged, until the intervening void was clouded with dissipating particulate matter, the twisted wreckage of starships, and the corpses of those who had once crewed them. By that time, capsuleers had gained the upper hand, their resilient starships taking on many times their number of antiquated Sansha battleships.

The wormhole pulsed once more, sending static through every local starship’s sensors. When scanners came back online and searched for targets, a new contact had arrived: The massive carrier was shrouded in a layer of projected energy shielding so thick that one could barely see the heavy armor plates beneath. The fighter bays along the monstrosity’s hull were closed, for it had no intention of launching any. Instead, its supplemental capacitors spun to life, sizzling with an overabundance of power as relay switches connected them directly to the built-in shield emitters. The field created was far more powerful than a normal shield but highly unstable. That was the point.

A tremendous blast of energy spread out in a spherical pattern, physically pushing ships away with the crushing force of charged gravitons. Attack drones simply evaporated as the weapon, designed to cause significant damage to much larger ships, reduced them to glittering pieces of superheated metal. Smaller capsuleer ships survived one or two bursts, perhaps, but by the time five waves had passed, everything smaller than a cruiser had disintegrated.

The capsuleers adapted to the situation quickly, though, adjusting their trajectories and cycling new ammunition into their weapons. Mere seconds after it had arrived, the carrier was inundated with a withering barrage of destruction. Scorching laser fire, armor piercing projectiles, tactical warheads, and superheated plasma bolts rained down until even its remarkably powerful shield system was spent. It listed awkwardly in space after losing control, but only for a few seconds before the relentless capsuleers closed in to finish the kill. After a few moments of smaller explosions tearing apart individual segments of its hull, the Sansha carrier’s thermonuclear generator released a blinding flash of light, incinerating the entire internal structure of the ship and leaving nothing but a charred husk of superstructure behind, slowly spinning as pieces continued to break off and drift away.

Unable to sustain a viable signal with the flagship destroyed, the wormhole wavered slightly, then vanished, abruptly ending the communications static and returning the system to a tentative state of normalcy. The invasion had ended, but the war was long from over. The capsuleers who weren’t busy salvaging the wreckage or attacking one another over the right to do so warped away one at a time or in small groups. They didn’t know when or where Sansha would strike next, but they knew that, with each empire’s defenses caught off guard and rendered all but unable to respond, they were New Eden’s only hope for a sustainable defense.

The Book of Emptiness (Part One)

On the planet of Athra some fifteen hundred years ago, right after the Moral Reforms had concluded and the Amarr Empire had begun its tentative steps towards further exploration and expansion, two men were walking through a desert in search of a sacred object whose recovery could, according to one of them, rock the foundations of the Empire.

The two men were accompanied by a team of soldiers whose primary purpose during the mission was to take orders from one of them and keep an eye on the other, and not to complain when they were forced to take detours, track back or even stop to attempt futile digs in the middle of nowhere. They were desert troops with years of experience with sandy dunes and dry winds, and had been chosen not only for their unyielding devotion to the Empire, but for their proven ability of living – and more importantly, not dying – in these amber wastelands.

The reason for the detours, trackbacks and digs was the slight absent-mindedness of one of the group’s leaders – a theological researcher named Akran, a man in his late fifties, with a mass of unruly hair that was combed only when he needed to engage in debate or presentation; an incredibly driven man whose mind lived in books while his body did whatever it needed to subsist. He was the catalyst and the linchpin for this quest, having spent a fair amount of his non-research time in argument and persuasion with some of the highest-ranking members of Amarr, with the eventual result that, if for no other reason than to shut him up, they’d granted him the minimum of funds and people needed to follow up on this quest of his.

So the soldiers were also diggers led by a man looking for a secret place that no one had visited for ages, and as the whole troupe trudged through the middle of nowhere, a place with no natural resources, no religious significance and no real habitability, it occurred to its other leader, a fervently religious soldier named Skar, that this was really fucking stupid. Skar was captain of the task squad set with finding the holy object, and despite his strong faith in God and the Holy he wasn’t even sure whether he believed in its existence, for while it was mentioned in the Scriptures, giving him full faith that it was, of course, real, he also believed that it was real in the same way that the faith itself was real; a presence beyond mere reality itself, as it were.

Skar shared his team’s conviction that nothing solid would come of this trek, but Akran’s own conviction was unshakeable. The researcher had created a new style of theological theory when he posited that he could triangulate the holy object’s location from bits of scripture taken from lore that had been previously been presumed to be completely unrelated, and after he had made a lot of noise in the auditoriums and the press, the authorities in their wisdom had decided they might as well give him permission and a little money to go on his quest, and thus keep the mission academic, rather than risk having the press focus all its attention on him. In this age of expansion they had more pressing things they wanted attention given to, and when this particular mission of Akran failed, as they knew it would, they could use it as a fallback if they needed to shift the focus from other embarrassments; and besides, as Skar had been tacitly informed, while they could just have the researcher killed, there’d be someone else along later with the same information who might not be as easily controlled.

At last, as the day had worn on and the sun blissfully begun its cooling descent, Akran told the troup that they had reached their destination and would begin digging imminently, to which Skar countered that if they did, it’d be Akran alone, while the rest of them would focus their energies on living to see tomorrow. Responding to his command the troup unloaded their gear and began camping for the approaching night, pointedly ignoring Akran, who did in fact not appear to be put out in the least. The workers unloaded their tents, beige and white, and set them up in a semicircle so that they could catch most of the brunt of a sandstorm that was expected later in the evening, then set up Skar and Akran’s own living quarters, larger tents of far more expensive material that would ventilate, warm and protect as needed. Skar’s tent was colored similarly to the workers’, with the addition of golden strips that spiralled down from its centre and out to its outer edges, while Akran’s own was a blue so light it was nearly cyan, an unorthodox concession of style he’d required of the tentmakers so that the mild, filtered light shining through it would help him study and protect the holy object of their quest.

Their two tents were located in the inner rim of the semicircle, the better to protect them from wind and sand, and while Skar appreciated the slight comfort this arrangement would bring, he knew that it would also force him to live closer to Akran than he’d like, and quite possibly have to engage the man in conversation over dinner.

As it turned out, the evening was a quiet affair, all talk being hushed by the tiredness of their soldiers and enveloped in the lights of the stars from the dark skies above. Staring up at the sky felt comforting to Skar in a manner that, he thought, would strike others as completely paradoxical. On the one hand it was a celestial covering, an extended roof on the world that enveloped him in its protective sheath and made it a finite creation, protecting him inside this little bubble of a world and of a life; but at the same time it reminded him of the infinite and the endless, the vastness of the world and the unknowability of all its wonder; and both of these viewpoints, as much as they clashed, led him inexorably to the Lord. He felt certain that this kind of duality of thought, and the fact he was capable of it, meant he had thought through all the sides of his faith, seeing and verifying its truths; and that certainty was important to him, for he was not a faithful man by nature and had instead come by his beliefs begrudgingly, after a time in his life so dark it made this desert night seem like an oasis of joy and light by comparison. The military man is used to being commanded, but the good military man is always in command, of himself first and foremost, and it had hurt to acknowledge that with this endless darkness encroaching upon him on all sides he would have to give himself completely over to a higher authority. Religion formed a large part of life in the Amarr empire, but it was the institutional religion of rule and order, not the visceral, internalized one of formless wonder, and while everyone professed to worship the Lord above, what they did in fact worship – in the military, especially – was the framework of quiet devotion and worship where the army, if anything, was a modernized version of the cloisters of old, with the same selfless giving, and the same striving to meet a higher goal. But for Skar it had not been enough, and at last there had come a time where the framework on which he had hung his cloth of faith felt as empty as his own insides and he decided to let its true owner in at last; a loss of control he still resented, and a frustration he readily admitted to himself, but it was and would remain the greater and only choice: to entrust his fate to the hands of the Almighty, to accept life’s storms as a passenger instead of the oarsman, and to see the world no longer merely as it was and no more than that, but through the imperfect eyes of a vessel of God.

And now here was Akran, an annoyance of a man who wanted to see behind the curtain, to put his interpretation on God’s words and glean not their hidden meanings but the meaning behind those meanings; and, certainly, also a well-read and intelligent scholar, one who had managed to attract to an area of theo-archaeological research that had apparently been quite neglected, and who had already accumulated some impressive finds of religious artifacts, all of which had resulted in this journey into the desert.

As they supped on the usual glutinous mix of fatty meat and potatoes, Akran said to him, “How do you feel about finding the Book of Emptiness?”

Skar stopped eating and looked at him. It was the first time they had mentioned the object’s name in quite some time, and hearing it from Akran’s lips had the same faint whiff of blasphemy as before.

“It’s for the good of God and Empire,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

“Is it now?” Akran said, calmly ladling more food from the pot and onto his plate.

Skar didn’t know whether to be annoyed or careful. The researcher might be here by the grace of others, but he had not achieved that grace through being a simpleton. The two men had spent a few nights camped out in various parts of the desert but had not held a whole conversation yet; Skar’s mind had been on faith and darkness, while Akran had constantly been going over his notes and trying to better triangulate their quarry. This was the first time he was this relaxed, which Skar took as a sign that they were about to do their final dig.

“Had you heard of the Book?” Akran asked.

Skar, an autodidact of anything to do with his faith, made to answer, then stopped. He hadn’t been asked whether he’d read about the holy object, but whether he’d heard of it, and thus reasoned he wasn’t expected to share his knowledge of the theology, but of Akran’s research into it.

“I knew you were holding lectures on it. And that you got enough support from Empire to take us on this journey. That’s all,” Skar said. The liquid in his bowl glimmered oily in the light of the fire.

Akran cleared his throat, and Skar knew, just knew, that he was about to hear one of those lectures. He looked to the stars, quelled a sigh and gave quick thanks that at least he’d been spared the proselytizing until now, then looked back down at his bowl and waited for the words.

Ages ago, Akran said, a brilliant philosopher whose name had been lost to history had become so dissatisfied with the limits of his native tongue to express what he saw on the inside of his head that he created a symbolic language, similar to maths, with which he could describe such concepts as truth, beauty and reality in specific terms without having to go through the whole definition rigmarole that identified much of modern philosophy. This was not the first time someone had attempted such a thing, though it was usually the domain of mathematicians and some of the more experimental theologians, and despite the man’s fame for inventive capacity it was not treated with any great amount of seriousness or interest. That was, until he released the first draft of his book to a select group of readers who read it and became, in the oft-quoted words of an unfortunate Empire enforcer who found them and later disappeared, beautifully insane. They were not catatonic, but spoke only under certain specific circumstances, in which they would let out a torrent of glossolalia that always begun with the phrase “I have not read the Book of Emptiness,” then instantly turned formless and wavery but remained coherent and, in fact, absolutely clear. They spoke, if such a term may be used, about the absolute reality of the world in which they lived, and as with any other organism that exists under absolute reality, it may be said that they were insane, but it was not a lack of sanity that afflicted them; rather, a sense that reached beyond mere identity and utterly unified them with the world. The ones who heard them later reported that the sounds that entered their heads left them momentarily unable to filter, judge, avoid or ignore any aspect of both the physical and the metaphysical realities in which they lived. In short, the entire world was revealed to them, and they saw themselves both as the inherent parts of it and outside of it, as if they were the viewer and the viewed all at once.

In less enlightened societies this kind of behaviour would have been seen as heretical and would have earned everyone involved a brief and smoky stay on a pyre, but at that point in history Amarr was remarkably tolerant to aberrant behaviour. As Akran remarked to Skar, the religious history of the Amarrian Empire could in some way be seen as the ocean: The force with which it weighed down the free expression of its fringe elements would ebb and flow like the rising tide on a wayward beach, periodically washing in to quell and suffuse the sands of thought before receding again for long enough to allow the little kernels to cast off their influence and take to the winds. In this case, the philosopher’s books were captured and destroyed, the people who’d read them were given free medical treatment, which in a couple of cases turned out to last for perpetuity, the people who’d heard those people speak were given paid leave until such point as they could see fit to return to work, which they all eventually did, and the philosopher himself was given the choice of either cutting it out and becoming a productive member of society, or following the traditional rule of mad prophecy and taking it out into the desert. To the disappointment but little surprise of the ruling body, the philosopher chose the desert, and was rarely heard of again. Snippets of his conversations with the desert tribes could be found in various of the lesser scriptures, but they made little sense at the best of times, and whether due to translation issues or madness on the philosopher’s behalf it had been assumed for a long time that his career and life’s work had effectively turned to ruin when he first set foot on the sandy dunes, never to return, and never to be found again.

Until Akran came along, a long time later, and said that he understood.

He had not been able to comprehend the philosopher’s entire dialogue to the desert folk, and he readily admitted this, but he had nonetheless managed to piece together and retranslate enough to figure out where the philosopher had buried the last remaining copy of the Book of Emptiness. Right here, on this spot where they had camped.

Skar closed his eyes.

“You think we won’t find it?” Akran said, in a tone Skar couldn’t rightly decipher.

Skar thought about his answer for a while, then said, “I think each one of us has to find it on their own.”

Akran laughed quietly at that. “Good answer, soldier,” he said. “And now I’m going to get some sleep. With God’s grace, tomorrow we’ll all find what we’re looking for.”

To be continued…

The Plague Years

Fermar looked at the sun for the last time. His home had one of the most scenic spots on the asteroid mining colony, and if he stood at this living room window at the eve of the day he could see all the ships coming and going.

One had docked just now. Fermar inhaled deeply, holding his breath before slowly letting it out again. His hair was all grey and his hands were rough and creased, as befitted a man who’d worked on the colonies all his life. He noticed his own reflection in the window, superimposed on the starry blackness. It seemed to be smiling.

There was a knock and the sound of someone opening the outside door. A man’s voice said, “He’s in here, sir,” and another voice said, “Thank you. I’ll see myself in.” That second voice was much huskier than the first, worn but not imposing. There was the sound of a door closing.

A man walked into the living room. He was dressed in black, stylish in a fairly classical way and covered with a mop of dark, curly hair; noticeable, all in all, but not memorable. He was younger than Fermar by at least thirty years, but didn’t carry himself with the same bullish assurance. Fermar moved like a man used to high gravity; this one sidled like someone expecting the sky to pick him up at any time.

“Terden,” Fermar said.

“Hi, Fermar,” Terden said.

“Get out.”

“It’s not what you think.”

“Get out.”

“I have a deal for you.”

“I have a gun in working order. Get out.”

Terden walked over to a settee and sat down, unbuttoning his coat and pulling off his gloves. “I … want to help you,” he said.

“You want to do a lot of things, but help won’t be high on the list.”

“I … wanted to see you on the sly, too, but I was nabbed as soon as I came in.” His whispery voice was oddly modulated; it would start off slow, get its bearings, then rush to the end of the sentence as if trying to race past the meaning of its words. “Security’s tight here,” he added.

“Of course it is.”

Terden ran a hand through his thick hair. “So you know why I’m here.”

“Your creatures are coming,” Fermar said. “I’ve heard reports. They’re settling in the area, kidnapping people. Same as they always do.”

“Which is why I’m here,” Terden said. “Hear me out, but take a seat first, please.”

Fermar looked at him for a moment, then walked over to a chair opposite the settee and sat down.

“You’re right. The people I work for … they’re coming, they’re reaching out and they need new recruits, but nobody needs to get hurt. You yourself could walk away completely untouched.”

“Everybody gets hurt when the Sansha come in,” Fermar said.

“We don’t want a fight, and we don’t want people to die,” Terden said, ignoring the comment. “You and I, we know each other. You remember what happened last time and I don’t want that to happen again. I want you to give up this colony and convince its people to surrender so we can move in quietly and without bloodshed.”

“You know what happened in the Plague Years,” Fermar said. “Why did you even bother coming to me?”

“Because I do remember the Plague Years and the time before them, too. I remember being taken in for a long while when I didn’t have anywhere to go and I remember a family that showed me a lot of kindness when I didn’t always deserve it.”

“Damn straight, you didn’t,” Fermar said.

“And I remember Carla,” Terden said.

Fermar jumped to his feet as if he’d been stung, glowered at Terden and seemed about to say something, hesitated, then merely stood there in silence. Finally it was as if the air went out of him, and he sat down heavily again.

The two men sat there, unmoving. After a while Fermar said, “Drinks in wood cabinet, lounge, other room. No ice.”

Terden got up and walked out of the room. There was a clink of glasses and he returned, handing a drink to Fermar and holding one himself. “There was only one bottle,” he said.

“I don’t much go in for alcohol,” Fermar said. “Serve guests, that’s it.”

“Always happy to be a guest here,” Terden said and took a sip, then grimaced. “Strong stuff.”

Fermar held the glass at arm’s length, as if he’d forgotten about it. He had a faraway look in his eyes. “Why did you bring her up?” he said.

“When we come in, who do you think will be in the lead?”

Fermar put down his glass and stared at Terden.

“You all did me a lot of good during hard times,” Terden said. “But that’s over now. These are new times. Remember Melvue.”

“You will not mention that name again,” Fermar said calmly.

“It’s the … height of the Plague Years, and I won’t pretend that the term doesn’t apply to the Sansha, too, because they came right when everything was bad enough already. So what happens? The leader of the mining colony is approached one night at his house by a scout like me, and he gets an offer, same as you do now, and he takes the offer. We … move in, not intending any violence, but then some people get it into their heads they want to fight. So they fight, and they get hurt, and some of them manage to run away and some of them don’t, all because the colony leader tried to make a sensible deal with us, and some people made a bad decision.” Terden leaned forward. “It doesn’t have to happen again.”

“To hear you of all people saying this.”

“They’re coming, Fermar,” Terden said. “And you’re the leader now. But I know that you can keep your people in check, so I offer you the same deal as they did back then.” He leaned back, waiting for an answer. When none was forthcoming, he said, “You know, they don’t always do this. Sometimes they … just move in, especially when they’re hungry for people, and believe me, with the capsuleers thinning out their numbers they’re real hungry now. But I know you, and I asked to come here, smooth things out.”

Fermar said, “We might fight back this time, too. I have contacts and I heard of the Sansha coming. I made sure we had weapons.”

“That’s stupid,” Terden said. “Stupid and suicidal.”

“They have my daughter. You know this,” Fermar said. “You people are on the other side of everything.”

They fell silent. Terden looked around. “Yeah, I know. Thanks for the reminder. It’s not like I’m here trying to help you, you ungrateful old fossil.” He looked back at Fermar. “I wasn’t going to bring up family, but since we’re on the subject, how’s your wife?”

“She’s dead,” Fermar said.

“That a fact? Is that why there are no pictures of her?” Terden said. He waved his hand at the walls. “I see pictures of your daughter here but not your wife. That’s surprising, isn’t it?”

Fermar sat silent. Terden said, “I think she’s dead to you. Which is usually a little different, though right now it comes out to about the same. When did you lose her? After we came? Long after?”

“Why the hell are you asking this?” Fermar said.

“Because the … only one who matters to you now is Carla and I don’t believe for a second that you’re being a colony leader because you want to. It’s because you’re a sensible man with a good head on his shoulders who’s taken so many losses that now he only wants to wait until life catches up with him and eats up that one last breath he has.”

Terden took another sip of his drink and quietly added, “You could see Carla.”

Fermar’s breath caught. His own drink was untouched; he reached for it, hesitated, then reached again but didn’t pick it up, only held on to it as if for ballast. “What did you say?”

“I can’t guarantee that you will spend much time together, but at least you will meet again. She’s close enough in the area that she could be brought over, and I’ve told the Sansha of her connection to you. But that’s not going to happen if you bring a fight.”

“They won’t send Carla if I fight?”

“Oh, they will definitely send Carla if you fight. With a gun in her hand. And this is the first house she’ll go to. They’ll dock, and they’ll swarm in, and they won’t enter a single house until they’ve entered yours, dragged you out and put a bullet in your brain. They will make an example out of you.”

Fermar studied Terden for a while, then said, “I believe you. Speaking of which, that rotten cheat of a colony leader whose name you mentioned earlier. How’s he doing?”

Terden’s tone changed subtly from confrontation to elucidation. “Melvue made the right choice, so he’s doing fine, enjoying his life.”

“That so?”

“Absolutely,” Terden said without hesitation.

Fermar said, “See, that’s interesting. Because the last time I saw him, he was tied to a chair in a noiseproof room, and there was little all life left in him.”

Terden, sipping from the glass, froze up.

“You’re right,” Fermar said. “He did make the right choice, back when he was colony leader. It was right for him and nobody else. And we never forgot it.”

Fermar, glass in hand, slowly rose to his feet and walked over to Terden, towering over him. “I lost Carla, who your people took, and I lost my wife, who couldn’t stand the loss and the aftermath. The Sansha took everything from me, and that miserable excuse for a human being we had as colony leader, he paved their way.”

He poured the content of his wine glass on the floor beside Terden, who momentarily looked down at his own glass before looking up again with a puzzled expression.

Fermar said, “For years I couldn’t even think straight. Carla had been taken and I wanted to get her back at any cost. I made contacts, I moved around, and I started to learn about the people you serve, but there was no way to get to her, or even discover where she was.” He leaned in close. “Until, at long last, I tracked down my old colony leader. He was a spy by that point, working for you people in another colony, reporting on its setup and getting in with its leaders.”

In a cold tone, Terden said, “And you ratted him out. To be tortured and killed.”

“During which I discovered that life among the True Slaves really isn’t that pleasant. In fact, it’s downright rotten. You’re taken in and made into a mindless drone, subject to the whims of a single person who certainly doesn’t bear your interests at heart, and it eventually drives you insane. Doesn’t matter what level your implants are; there’s a threshold beyond which you start to rebel against the lack of free will, and your subconscious realizes that it’s been trapped. It’s extremely painful in the long run, though the symptoms break out in unusual ways. You’ve never thought about how willing these people are to die for their master? You would think that even his machinery couldn’t erase the survival instinct. But once you’ve been his slave for long enough, apparently all you want to do is die.”

Terden took a long, slow sip. “I’m perfectly … fine,” he said.

“You scouts get more autonomy than the rest,” Fermar said. “All they need is to keep tabs on you, not control you. They’ll have vetted you and found that you’re one of that rare breed who’ll willingly join the Sansha. You’re safe,” he spat.

Terden stared at him, his jaw clenched. “Was there something wrong with the wine?” he said at last, nodding his head towards the puddle of alcohol on the floor, and lifting his own glass to his mouth.

“Oh, it’s poisoned,” Fermar said.

Terden stopped, wine in his mouth. He slowly swallowed, then said, “I’ve finished half a glass, Fermar.”

Fermar looked at the spreading stain on the floor. Terden followed his gaze, dropping his own glass in the process. When Terden looked back up at Fermar, the old man had a gun in his hand.

Terden’s eyes widened and he started to rise, but Fermar shot him, first through a knee, then through each shoulder. Terden dropped to the floor, screaming, and Fermar knelt down beside him, saying, “Before you go into shock, I want to tell you something. I know this won’t get to the Sansha, because they don’t use direct feeds on their scouts.

“First off, the wine wasn’t poisoned. I wanted to slow you down a bit, make you comfortable, and distract you at the end. Which is funny, because it’s pretty much what your type does when you’re about to pounce on innocent people.

“Second, I know Carla is in this region. She’s been here for a while. It was a long time before I realized that I couldn’t possibly go after her, and if I tried they’d either kill me or move her somewhere that I’d never find her.

“So I’m bringing her to me.”

Terden was quiet, gasping for breath.

Fermar arose, grunting with the effort. “Once everyo-” He hesitated, then fired a shot into Terden’s arm. Terden screamed, and his hand, which had been reaching into his clothes, dropped back into view, a small pellet rolling out of its grip.

“Leave the suicide dose alone, thanks. I want you to hear this.” Fermar ambled over to his seat, keeping his gaze on Terden. “This entire colony is wired with explosives.”

Terden’s grimace turned to surprise, and he stared at Fermar in shock. “You’re insane,” he said.

“Everyone has left, just about. I knew you people were coming even before you did. I still have my contacts, and I watch the solar winds. When they made me leader I told them of my Sansha experience, and one of the first things I did was implement an escape plan in case your employers decided to move into the area. Which they did, after a good long while, and I had my people start practicing.” He had the gun trained on Terden, and his eyes narrowed. “When I found out that you of all people had been posted to this part of space, I knew it wasn’t long to wait, and that you’d be the one they’d send. When I heard you were finally on your way, I fired up the plan, and everyone left quietly and efficiently. The only people still here are a skeleton crew, and after you and I are finished they will leave, too. Nobody here will get caught by the zombies. Nobody.”

“Your daughter … will come here, “Terden said. “She will come to your house, gun in hand, and if I don’t return you’ll never get her back.” A puddle of blood was spreading around Terden’s body, and his voice quavered with exhaustion.

“Oh, I will. But not the way you think I want,” Fermar said. He got up again and walked over to Terden, this time kneeling on his damaged hand. Terden hissed in pain, but kept his eyes open and staring straight into Fermar’s.

Fermar said, “Once someone has been taken in by the Sansha, modified to Carla’s level and kept for as long as she has, there’s no turning back. The only thing I can do for her now is ease her misery, and my own, and that of anyone else you people send to this miserable rock. And if I can’t do it, for whatever reason, then the explosives will.”

“Murderer,” Terden croaked.

“Yes,” Fermar replied calmly. Terden’s expression showed that this hadn’t been the expected reaction. “After my team has gone, everyone left here will die,” Fermar said.

“Including me,” Terden said, clearing his throat and taking deep, hissing breaths.

“Including you.”

“You really are a bitter, vengeful old fossil, aren’t you?” Terden said, trying to shift so that he could glare at Fermar. “And you’ve lost it. You tried rebelling once when you had a perfectly good chance of saving everyone you cared about, and you failed, so now you want to finish the job and make sure they’re all dead!” He had lifted his head with the effort, his shoulders giving him no support, and now he slumped back to the ground, breathing heavily, his one good hand making a fist.

Fermar thought about this, then said, “I’m finishing what needs to be finished. And confronting something no one else would, which is a lesson you and a lot of other people should have learned a long time ago. If it wasn’t for people like you, you and that old colony leader, we never would’ve had those situations at all, and I wouldn’t have lost my daughter.”

There was no response.

Fermar sighed, aimed his gun and shot Terden in the head. Terden twitched with the impact, then lay still in his puddle of blood.

Fermar set the gun down on his chair, then walked over to the comms console and activated it. “It’s done,” he said.

Very shortly after, several men came into the room. “You do all right, sir?” they asked him.

“Yeah, it’s all confirmed,” he said. “Thanks for waiting. You were close?”

“Outside the door, practically,” one of them said, and grinned. “No worries, we didn’t listen in. After we heard the shot and his scream, we knew you had him.”

“Alright. Clear out the body, please, then get in your ships as fast as you can. You have a little time, but not much.”

The men nodded, and carried Terden’s body out of the room. Fermar had turned and was about to put away the drink glasses when he heard them all come back in. They walked up to him in silence, and every one of them shook his hand. Then they left.

Fermar sat down to wait. If he had failed with Terden, these people would have taken over, after which they’d have primed automated triggers that would set off the explosives as soon as the Sansha had gotten into the colony.

Now that his suspicions had all been confirmed, the only thing remaining was to sit it out. If something were to happen to him now, the triggers would still work, but he hoped he’d see it through. He hoped he would hear a knock at the door and see another familiar face, if only for a second, before the end.