“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.

King Slaver

The Bertha, a prisoner cargo vehicle, slowed to a crawl without so much as a squeal of tires. The skies were clear and burning blue, and a heat haze wavered up off the scorching bone-white sand.

Bertha’s doors opened and a large man with a gun stepped out. He didn’t look around but immediately walked on a few paces away from the vehicle, then turned and looked at it silently, standing at ease.

A group of red-clad, head-shaven men shuffled out, single file. Most of them did not look around, either, though whether out of fear of what they might see or a dread that it might be exactly what they expected was hard to tell. The last man to exit the vehicle did glance to either side, taking in the desert fields all around him, buffeted by ugly swamps full of gnarled trees and animals and a musky stench he could smell all the way to where he stood, and, closer by, a huddle of wood and stone buildings that stood on top of black-sanded stalagmite hills, surrounded by deep trenches from which came ugly, grinding sounds. His designation was number 47; a low number, but he’d been informed that they were re-used when their past owners no longer needed them.

Another ugly sound, short and sharp, rang out much closer. Prisoner 47 looked back to the group and found that the man with the gun had shot one of the others, for whatever reason. The dead man lay sprawled in the sand and his blood ran out slowly, absorbed and blackened by the earth. What unsettled the prisoner – he was not shocked, nor aghast, because by now he had exhausted the wells of those emotions – was the silence: not just of the others in the group, which was understandable, but of the guard himself. The shooting obviously hadn’t been out of any kind of justifiable motive, any more than the rest of the events that had landed them all in this place, but the calm look on the guard’s face showed it hadn’t been because of anger, either. It was, simply, the way things were here.

The prisoners, Amarrian all, were marched into the camp that was to be their home for the foreseeable future. They were somewhere in the Minmatar Republic, they had been secretly tried in Minmatar military courts, and they were considered a collective threat to the interests and the freedom of the Minmatar people. Freedom was an important concept, apparently. The Minmatar found it so important, the prisoner thought, they wanted to keep it all to themselves.

***

It was several weeks before 47 first heard of the King, and by that time he was to all intents and purposes dead himself.

Faith had been a notable part of life in the Amarr Empire. No more, and no less. It was there, always there, in speech and the back of minds, but it was not an important part unless cut off, much like breathing. The citizens of the Amarr Empire were not, whatever outsiders might like to believe, fanatics. They simply accepted faith, and had a tacit agreement among themselves not to violate its major tenets. Civilization, to them, worked much the same way. One did not impinge on another’s sphere of being – their liberty, their freedom or their joy – just as one did not, metaphorically speaking, walk into church, lower one’s pants and leave a steaming gift to the almighty. Things worked, and people understood what they needed to do and not do in order to to make them work.

The Minmatar understood this, too.

After the murder at their arrival, the group had suffered no more direct attacks, deadly or otherwise, from the guards. None were necessary. The entire colony had been constructed not for the output of its manual labor but to break the spirits of its inmates. Work started under dark blue skies and ended the same, and whatever little sleep there was to be had remained unsettled and light, punctuated by the groans and muffled wails of fellow inmates. They slept in large barracks with little privacy, three per bunk. The guards who walked through would swing their batons against the bunk beds’ metal railings, startling the inmates out of tired revelries; and once awake, the prisoners would lie still with open eyes and hear the mournful, hungry howling wails of the slaver hounds drifting over from the swamp. During the day, the sun would beat down on them as they worked, either digging or mining or, in a very few trusted cases, running services for the camp. Noise blared throughout the work areas, echoing off the rocks that surrounded them, vibrating in their tools and in their heads. Food was scarce and revolting, and clothes were rarely washed. The routine wore them out. It kept them numb, too, but only on the surface, leaving them completely susceptible to deeper influences.

The guards played games. One day per week was a holiday, during which inmates were free to rest, roam about or even leave the area altogether. No one wandered; the sun-drenched desert and the swampy woods beyond were formidable repellants. Instead, the guards would hide things – anything from colored pebbles to little skeins or wooden plaques with pictures of Amarrian idols – in the possessions of some random, unknown prisoner, then call out a hunt. If the items were found before sundown, and the right person given up, that individual would usually have their rations withdrawn for the next two days. If the items were not found, everyone lost their rations. That was the basic version of the game, but some guards were more inventive than others, and occasionally offered an alternative to the rations – especially if the target looked like they wouldn’t last two days without food.

One liked people to eat sand, or wads of someone else’s hair. The prisoner saw a friend ingest so much dirt that his exhalations left little muddy spatters on the ground; and later, overnight, he sat up with the man and held him still as his agonized, bleeding body rid itself of what it had been forced to ingest.

One liked public sex, choosing at random another inmate to accompany the victim. The rest of them had to stand around in a wide circle and maintain absolute silence, hearing only the hoarse, bleating grunts from the center.

One was partial to violence, and breakage.

The prisoner 47, after somehow bearing to watch several of these events, began to notice that certain people had an aura over them. They were safe. They stood where they wanted, instead of hiding among the assemblage. They lost their rations like everyone else if the item hunt turned out empty, but when special rules came into play they stood at ease, solitary and sheltered. All of them had apparently been in the camp for a while.

The prisoner saw them mill about, unobtrusive but entirely unconcerned, as he watched friends and compatriots tortured, molested and beaten. He saw them look at the sky not because they wanted to avoid the sights on the ground, but because they genuinely found nothing else of interest around them. Unconcerned, and unaffected.

It shook him. When he tacitly inquired about these people, every question went unanswered. It wasn’t as if they were aiding the guards, or in some manner actively participating in the degradation. Amazingly, 47 felt no real animosity towards the guards themselves: They were the catalysts of pain and suffering, but what they inflicted was so terrible as to render them inhuman in his mind. There was no more point in hating them than there was in despising the weather. But those fellow inmates carrying a secret that in any way related to or amplified the suffering of everyone else around them, those men were nothing but traitors. Worse than that, in 47′s opinion, they were evil. They were evil men. Not grey like the guards and the sand at night, but black just through and through.

And he was continually forced to watch the games, week after week after week, until one day something in him simply gave way. While two inmates were fighting in the middle of the circle, seeing who could break the other’s right arm first, 47 shuffled over to an ignored little corner of the plaza and picked up a wooden plate on which was painted in gold a picture of an Amarrian saint. It had been the day’s bounty and was now being ignored by the other prisoners, who all stood slack and gazed at the fight in the distance. Number 47 held it casually to his side as he walked up to one of the safe men, some older guy inspecting a cloud far above, and swung it back and beat him in the face with all the power he had.

The man crumpled to the ground, blood spurting from a gash on his cheek. Number 47 descended on him. He got in a handful of blows before the guards yanked him onto the ground and adminstered a beating of their own. As he lay on the ground, shortly before he lost consciousness, he caught a glimpse of the other man, lying there not far from him, apparently at ease with himself and the world. The man was smiling. He said something but it was muffled by the blood in his mouth, and all 47 could read from his lips was “hail to the king.”

It took him several days to recover, during which he was exempt from labor but given only half portions. No major bones had broken but several were badly bruised, tendons were overstretched, and his skin looked like a relief map. He had a lot of time to think while everything healed. Being yanked from his daily routine, first by the upset that had led to the beating, then by being forced to stay in the sick ward – he hated the routine but it really was all he had – turned him more and more tense, and all he could think about was his growing obsession with inequality.

It was like faith, and in his convalescence he realized that even in this place, where he truly expected to remain until he died, he had clung to his beliefs. Not the great, grand vision of God and Emperor, but the deeper, unspoken truths that lay behind them. Everyone could suffer, everyone did suffer, and 47 had grown up implicitly accepting that life, for all its joys, had plenty of suffering to heap onto its people – but only so long as everyone was equal. Not in the experience of suffering itself, for that, along with life’s pleasures and darkness, belonged to you and nobody else; but in open judgment, in evaluation, before the renownedly loving but – secretly, suspected, known in the heart of hearts of all their subjects – uncaring and disinterested authorities.

Each time he shifted, it hurt like blazes. He was aware of every breath. His body had lost so much weight that his bones clicked against one another. He was willing to die in this place, if that was his secular fate; in this cot or out in the mines. There was little, at this point, he could do about that. But he wanted so badly, with such horrible need, to go to his eventual death as a man of values, not a slack-jawed ghost who hadn’t known the meaning of the life slowly leaving him. He needed to know the meaning of things here. He knew it existed; it had to exist, or life no longer made sense and he was a ghost among ghosts. A god, or a guard, or, as it seemed, a king. A ruler of the earth. The perfect authority for this terrible place. The devil.

It had to be, the more he thought of it. The source, not of suffering, which was God’s work, but of inequality. The chaos of counterbalance to God’s own order.

And he had to meet this king. To understand why the world was the way it was. Not to comprehend it in its entirety – that was given only to God and the most wicked of men – but to understand the balance. To know how this inequality worked, of the camp and the people in it, and through that understanding, to incorporate it as a blip, a sensible aberration that was merely a stray chaotic fluke in a much greater scheme of order.

He understood that he might have a fever, too. Certainly the things he saw crawling on the inside walls of the infirmary could not possibly be there. Not even the ones that sometimes crawled up into the cot with him, with chitters and wet little clicks.

When 47 finally got out of the infirmary, he was a different man. He got into more fights, seeking to beat out the knowledge he needed. Other inmates shunned him. There were more beatings, too, though none so vicious as the first had been.

He got pulled into a game, once. He sobbed into his straw-filled pillow that night and several nights after, and in the days that followed merely fought even harder. If this was chaos, he would be part of it until recognized as its own.

And at last someone gave it away. One of the men with the holy auras, caught unawares behind a supply shed. Once he recognized 47, beneath the flurry of blows, he started to say something, but it was not until 47 had exhausted himself and fallen gasping to his knees that the victim managed to speak. Even then, it was hard; the man’s face was swollen up and distended, as if made from lumps of clay. Prisoner 47 crawled over to him and bent over his face, looking down at the mess of blood and flesh he’d brought into creation. Still, the man tried to talk, his tongue pushing away blood that 47 noticed was being watered out and then realized it was from the tears dropping from his own eyes.

“Jungle. The King is in the jungle,” the victim told him. “Go there. He will see you now.”

That same evening, not for cover but the cool of dusk, 47 ran off, through the desert for either minutes or hours, until the musky scent enveloped him.

He waded through for hours or days. The chittering was loud here, and the things clicked wetly when he held them, but they had protein and liquids and that sustained him. Occasionally there was growling in the distance, which 47 suspected came from wild slaver hounds, but never anything more. It did not worry him that the beaten man had refrained from giving directions. Whoever or whatever this King was – and 47 was just as ready for it being a desiccated tree or some other dead altar where he would lay down and die – he would be found if he wanted it.

When at last he stopped, he did not sleep. Instead, he dropped into some place dark and still. Once he came back to himself he found the night felt different, not brighter but perhaps more still.

Before his eyes, a mix of broken, felled trees and rotting foliage resolved itself into a shack, standing on crooked feet a little above the marsh. He waded over to it, clambered up onto the gap that seemed to be an entrance, and made his way in.

There was almost total darkness inside, though his eyes adjusted remarkably fast. A corner held an empty spread of straw – dry, to 47′s amazement – and in the murky gloom of another, a silhouette of deeper darkness gave the impression of a man.

“Sit,” the voice said. He obeyed. The straw crackled under his weight. He couldn’t help but touch it, languidly running his hands over it in a combination of nerves and obsession. It seemed entirely too pure to be here.

A thought struck him. “We are-” he started, then stopped to cough his voice into action. He couldn’t remember when he had last spoken.

“We are in a desert,” he tried again. His voice was deep but without much volume. He could feel it echo in his faded body. “How do we even get food, let alone the straw in our bedding?”

He could hear the King’s breathing. It turned shallow for a moment, as if he were amused. “Hot-dropped from outside, like all your supplies. Selected prisoners bring the crates into camp under cover of darkness.”

“Who selects them?”

The unseen figure, he knew, grinned at him for a moment. Then he said, not unkindly, “Is this why you came here? To ask about the straw in your bedding?”

Prisoner 47 thought it over. It was hard to hang on to thoughts for very long, and he didn’t feel certain he could articulate them too well. He slid a hand over the straw and felt how the clamminess of his palms left a slick trail over the surface. It wasn’t just that the straw was dry; he was wet. He was soaked.

He had a fever again, he realized.

Something shifted, and something small and inert was suddenly lying in front of him. “Eat this,” the voice said.

He did. It tasted greater than anything he’d had for a long time, certainly in the colony itself, though a part of him missed the crunch and chitter of the jungle outside.

He tried to collect his thoughts again. “I think I went mad.”

The King replied, “Yes. I think you’ve gone mad,” and waited for 47 to speak again.

The prisoner thought it over. At last he said, “How did you become King?”

There was a hesitation. Then, “I was like you, worn out and broken. But I kept glimpsing something else, as if behind a veil. At last, something in me gave way and let me see the darkness proper, only to find out I’d known it all along. ”

The prisoner thought this over, too. “Is that true?”

There was a short laugh. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just good at making connections and reading other people’s minds, until the point came where even the guards didn’t know what to do with me.”

“So you left.”

“So I left. I get what I need here. They bring me straw, held over their heads to keep it dry, and they bring food and drink and whatever else I require. If the guards have it, so do I.”

“Why?”

“What else is there, in this place?” the King said to him. “Except eventual death, and all your suffering until then. And me, giving you the faith you need.”

“Does everyone follow you?”

“No. And they die either way, but the ones who came to know me can live in a little comfort, which is briefly important, and die with understanding, which means so much more.”

The King continued, “I decide who is safe. My people do not get chosen for games. If you get hurt, you will be allowed to mend before going on. You will never lose a meal. It’s not for everyone.”

“I made it here,” 47 said. Even with the meal in his stomach, it was hard to think.

“You made it here. You went into the darkness. You can be one of our own, if you wish.”

In the darkness, 47 nodded. “What do I need to do now?” he said.

“The same thing you did that let you be led here. Embrace it. Accept it. Know that you belong to it.”

“The chaos.”

“Oh yes,” the King said, as if receiving the right answer to an unasked question. “Exactly that.”

The voice grew closer, as if the King had leaned in. “Every man who comes here is a man of faith, a creature of thought come to understand that there is something greater than you. But until you come here you have nothing like the true faith, only carefully selected pieces of it. Here is where you fill in the rest. Here is where you become, at last, a believer of a dark and utter truth. Did you feel it missing, before you came here?”

“Yes,” 47 whispered.

“Was it a life that seems now not only distant, but fake as well? False, and incomplete?”

“Yes,” 47 said.

“Yes,” the King echoed. “Here is all the truth a man of faith, a true man of faith, could ever have sought.”

The prisoner knew he was right. Here it was, all of it. In a prisoner’s camp where people were broken; in an emptiness full of beasts and starvation. The balance, found at last.

“Thank you,” 47 said. It came out choked. He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said again, loud and clear.

“I’m glad you found the faith,” the King told him.

The prisoner 47 left the cabin and began making his way back to camp.

On his way through the marshy wilderness, he heard the growl again, much closer this time. He turned and found himself looking at a slaver hound, realizing in that moment what a terrible joke, what a perfect fulfilment of this life it was to have these beasts here to guard the faithful, diverted from their original purpose of guarding and attacking Minmatar slaves back in the Empire. He could hear the hound’s hoarse, deep breathing. Puffs of air wafted from its hungry face.

He stood still, calmly looking back at it. And in that animal face, with its sharp teeth dripping saliva, and the eyes red-rimmed and unblinking, he saw no longer a hunger, but a fellowship.

The Desert Fathers

Well, uh. Okay. My name is Kartanen Sedia. I am the overseer on Outpost 4972, where in the past three years we have been extracting minerals used in the production of various hybrid polymers that in turn are used to create advanced components for the capsuleer industry.

In fact, in those three years we have sustained a consistent output in the top forty-eight percentile while simultaneously maintaining a perfect safety record extending not only to security but to employee safety, and-… I’m sorry?

Oh. Of course. Yes.

First off, I am sorry about what happened. I assure you that once we are done here, I intend to launch my own investigation and get to the bottom of this. Szekel is not getting away with what he took.

It’s not easy, living in the desert. If they hadn’t discovered those mineral deposits I don’t imagine anyone would ever make their home here, at least not on this continent. That goes double for the scientists. You can always find hard workers for the excavation, people with calluses and no savings, but it’s harder pulling in those who consider air conditioning a basic human right, no matter what kind of interesting rock we’ve suddenly pulled out of our back yard.

Yes, I hired them all. Yes, even him. As I said, I regret what happened. His resume was-… my own? What do you mean?

All right. I’ve been an overseer on various outposts for most of my life, really. I was born on an asteroid colony and spent a good part of my life working those, but eventually the lack of solid footing got to me and I transferred to planetside work instead. I maintained exemplary security during my tenure on those colonies, with a near-perfect record in my thirty-year career.

Yes, including Outpost 3478, out in the dark near Stain.

Yes, where the Sansha came. What’s that to do with anything? It was ages ago, I did what was right, I was investigated afterwards and exonerated, and nothing’s ever been prov-…

Ah, hell. God damn it, god damn it and god damn you.

Nothing’s ever been quite the same since. Happy now? Everything changed. Yes, I’ve been working thirty years in the same damn business at the same damn level of lower management, and all because the cyborgs came in and ate up my people all those years ago. Nobody trusts me anymore.

Well, I suppose, yes, but I wouldn’t call it a sliding slope. It’s just hard to pull up from that kind of career slump. I drifted through jobs on other colonies and finally got a contract at this one, where I had intended to spend my remaining years until retirement.

No, not that well funded. I’ll have some money to live on, but … wait, why are you even asking me this? We’re trying to find a thief here!

No, I don’t have a lot of money. Not after the Sansha debacle.

Why are you asking me this?

***

Certainly. My name is Jania Betodt. I am working on my post-doctorate studies in astrobiology. The atmospheric properties on this planet make it a haven for acquiring large intact samples, though I must say I’ve never quite grown accustomed to the living conditions. I am married to Phaedan Betodt, and we have a wonderful daughter, Adara.

No, they’re not with me, but those are the costs of an interstellar life, right? They visit me on a regular basis. Anyway, I have had some noteworthy articles published in peer-reviewed journals, including at the University of-… well, yes, I suppose it has been a while since they last were here. I do communicate with them on a fairly regular basis, you know. When the relays work, yes. We’re a very close-knit family.

Well, because there was important work to be done here. I didn’t want to leave them behind, of course. It simply didn’t suit us to break up our careers. Look, is this about Szekel or my family?

What do you mean, ‘Both’?

Yes, I did work with him. Yes, closely. He’s a talented scientist and a hard-working man, whatever else he may be. We pulled a lot of long, hard shifts working on-site whenever a new batch of data came in. There’s only so long you have to study the new samples before the life they harbor is extinguished, no matter how well you may try to prolong it.

When that asteroid landed a few months ago, we were in heaven. It contained sealed pockets that our scans indicated might harbor brand new life. Only microscopic archaea, of course, but the way they seemed to be reacting with the metals in the asteroid was astounding. I don’t think we’ve even begun to scratch the surface, though of course Szekel’s disappearance, and the data I … guess he took, all of that is going to be rather a setback.

My daughter? She is with her father, and before you ask, I do miss her. I miss her a lot.

Him too, of course.

Yes, they were long shifts.

***

Rakan Dep.

I’m a security guy on this outpost.

Nothing else.

Hey, I’m cooperating. Even if I don’t know who the hell you people are.

Disgruntled? Hah! Listen. Listen. We are on a desert planet. There is nothing here but sand. If you end up living in a place like this with no hope of anything better, disgruntled is the least of your worries.

Well, okay. There’s a few towns and settlements in the area, but you’d be an idiot if you thought you could walk there by yourself. You’re isolated here, pretty much. You make it to the outpost, fine, but you’re not making it out on foot again.

I suppoze Szekel must’ve gotten help, yeah. Assuming you haven’t found him yet. Scorched and dead and picked at by the jackals, by now, if he went out by himself.

Of course I’ve been to the settlements. That’s why I’m not disgruntled, isn’t it, my pretties? Besides, there’s no fun to be had elsewhere.

Fun, yes.

Reading scripture, group hugs, and watching the sky. What do you think I’m talking about? Goddamn old fashioned fun-for-money. It’s mostly gambling, actually. I’d stick my dick in the noontime sand before putting it to some of the women you get down there. I’m sure it’d burn about the same in the end.

Hah! Thanks. I am available for children’s parties, you know.

Money, yeah … I don’t have enough, truth be told. Never quite manage to hit that mark. Always seem to spend too much. Hey, I’m not ashamed. I pull long shifts. You’ll find idiots anywhere who say they work hard and play hard, in that order, as if the first causes the second. I can’t say the desert life is my first choice, but I’ll live it the way I would anywhere else, and that means I need to bust my back earning for it. Doesn’t make it right or wrong, and certainly doesn’t mean I deserve any sympathy. It’s just how it is.

Yeah, the scientists got plenty. Especially after that damn meteor hit and the grants started coming in again. They’re decent people, most of them. Humans like the rest of us.

No … I just mean they do human things. I’m not gonna gossip. But let me tell you, it gets cold at night, here in the desert.

Sure, I’m human too. What, you’re calling me out on my track record? Go ahead. I know it’s grubby. You try working security all your life, live in the desert, too; see how clean you come out. Never taken money from people I shouldn’t, though. Nope. No, I don’t care how you put it – I’m clean when it comes to that. I may have taken some from people who shouldn’t have been dumb enough to bet it, and I may have been an intermediary for some people who had money and pale skin and fear of a little sand. But I haven’t gone dirty. You know Kartanen, the overseer? He gave me a shot at this. I’m here because of him.

No, he’s not a client. He’s saving up, thinking of buying a little house on a small planet a couple jumps from here, somewhere in … 32-GI9, I believe. He doesn’t think anyone knows about it, but I do. I watch the money. He’s never made bets or anything. He’s a decent man. And besides, you don’t touch someone’s life savings, not in this business. You know who people are.

Szekel? I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all. I have no idea how he breached security like he did.

I suppose it’s my responsibility, yeah. What are you getting at?

***

Look, it’s been three days. I’m getting tired of sitting in this room all the time. I’m the overseer on this colony and I don’t care who you people are, you can’t just come in here, shut everything down, and pull people into a-…

Yes! I hired Szekel, I let the man in and I gave him a job here, being fully aware that we were working with highly sensitive data, that we’d had an important rain and we were due to have another, and that he would be overseeing the research teams along with Jania. What else do you want?

What do you mean, everything?

***

What’s that you’re bringing in? I’m well familiar with all the equipment on this colony and this is not a part of our stocks. Look, if you have brought in your own scientific equipment, I need to be told. I am the sole remaining head researcher on this colony and I am to be included in all communications-…

Uh. Yes, I’m sitting comfortably. Why do you ask?

***

The fuck you doing with that thing in here?

***

I think, I think, I think we got off entirely on the wrong foot here. I did vet Szekel, I did give him a job, yes, certainly. But I haven’t done anything wrong. Surely you see that.

Of course I know how valuable the asteroid was. Of course I did. I am used to handling serious responsibility, I will have you know.

That was a cheap shot. We had no idea the Sansha were coming.

Look, there’s really no need to activate that thing. I am cooperating fully. I don’t know where you think you have your authority from, but-…

Oh. Really?

Ah.

All right.

Well, can you please tell them that I would never work for anyone else? I mean, while I was overseer here. Certainly not our competitors. I wouldn’t be feeding anything to them, data or whatever else.

I really don’t think you need to turn on that thing.

***

We did work together. I told you that. I worked with him, and yes, we got along fine. Can someone please tell me what this is all about? I don’t-… why did you just put that there? Why is that there? I consented to the monitors because I wanted you to know I was telling the truth, but I don’t think I want that there at all.

We just worked together. I didn’t know he was pulling data, or that he intended to do whatever he did with it. He was a good man and I trusted him. There was nothing going on. Can you please take that thing off me? Look, I am going to tell you whatever you want. I mean, I’m not going to hold back. I’ll be honest. I am not covering up for Szekel. I know full well how important our research was here, for me and this colony and for our employers. That’s who you’re working for, right?

I am going to ask you one last time to take that thing off, to-… What are you doing? No, come over here and take it off!

***

Look, I knew the dude from a little betting. The worker’s pool, mostly. Maybe a few extras, too. He wasn’t a bad guy, I’m sure, but he did make some bad bets. Had a few people upset at him over in the townships, but he was working to fix that. And I believe him. I did believe him.

Maybe he was doing something else, and maybe I’ll tell you all about it, but you better wheel that goddamn thing back out right this minute before I’ll say another word. I’ve worked in nullsec before. I’ve worked on colonies that rebelled, I’ve been there when the black suits come in, and I know what that hellish thing is for.

So maybe Szekel needed money and was looking for a way to make some, or maybe he just didn’t like the perks of being in the desert. That’s all I’m saying. That is all I am goddamn saying.

***

Look, look, look, look, look, look, I know there’s a guard. There is a guard on this colony who has money problems and access to security logs and probably a guilty conscience over something, hell if I know what other people think. I’ve seen them talking together, and I know they were in cahoots. It was him. If you want to find someone guilty of working with Szekel, it was him. Talk to him and you’ll see. Make him talk and you’ll see. Please take that thing off me. It was the guard.

***

I’m sorry about my earlier outburst. It was unprofessional of me. Unbecoming. Just let me take a breath, clear my head.

Alright. We can resolve this like human beings, I’m sure.

So. Of course you hear things, working on this station.

Yes, of course I will tell you. I am a respected scientist. We are having a reasonable discussion, you all and I. We are professionals. Yes. I have rights, and I know they apply even when there’s a communications blackout. Even in the private sector, on a colony in the middle of a desert, I have rights.

Of course. If you’ll just take that thing off me I can tell you all you want in detail, if you’ll just take no don’t activate it again please I beg you-…

***

You know they had an affair.

That’s all I’m saying. You can stop it now.

She mentored him when he came in, taught him to use the equipment, and spent all her time with him. Long hours in the lab, she’ll tell you. I know better. Lab, my ass. I know what the access logs would say. You can start up a job in those labs, let it idle for hours, and do whatever you want in the meantime.

Doesn’t take long to figure out how he might’ve got what he wanted, does it?

I want you to stop it now. I want you to unplug that damn thing and take these straps off me, because I am a patient man but I don’t need to be pushed and prodded to tell you anything.

Don’t you touch that dial. Don’t you touch it.

I’m going to throw up again, you bastards. I’m going to throw up. I’m gonna throw up!

***

Okay. I took the money, too. A share of it. It’s on my special account. No, it wasn’t for 32-GI9. It was to betray the colony, to let Szekel take the data to our competitors, or sell it on the open market, or whatever. Not 32-GI9. Just … make it stop. That’s all I know. Make it stop.

I did take the money, I don’t care if you can’t see it. I took it, all of it. What? No, no, a share, that’s what I meant, a share.

Thank you. Thanks for stopping it. I’ll just … I’ll just catch a breath.

You people are pretty brave, aren’t you? Coming in with your tools and your unquestionable authority.

Well. Let me tell you something.

You’ve gone over the limit and I intend to report you, I am going to stop you, I AM GOING TO TAKE YOU DOWN, I WILL TAKE ACT-

***

Don’t make me do this. Please. I don’t want to drag him into this, we haven’t spoken forever and the last time we talked I had to tell him that I … that I …

Don’t make me do this. If I talk to Phaedan then I’ll have to talk to Adara as well, and I don’t want her involved.

No. No, you’re wrong, I do have a choice. In fact, I want you to bring in my overseer. I don’t care what authority you people have, I want you to prove to me that he sanctioned the things you’ve been doing to me.

What do you mean, he-…

Oh no. No, you didn’t. Not Kartanen. No. I-… no.

No, don’t show me pictures.

I will make the call. I will contact Phaedan, I will talk to him and get him to come here if that’s what you really want, but please, not Adara. Oh gods. Kartanen was a good man. Please, not Adara.

You promise?

***

You can’t break me. Go to hell. You can’t break me.

You know the truth anyway. Oh yeah, she asked me to delete it from the logs.

When I get out of here, I will find you and I will hurt you.

Go to hell. You can’t break me.

***

…

***

You promise?

You promise?

You promise?

In the love of your life – any one of them, for there are many, no matter what you might think – there are three people, three human beings you fall for. There is the one at the start where everything is fresh and new, which is when you see only what they want you to see; the one some time after, when the gloves come off and they show you – or stop bothering to hide, at least – whatever else they knew they contained; and the last, long after, when you’ve begun to see so deep into them that you can tell what they cannot. If you’re lucky both of you will dovetail, fitting each other and changing in each other’s perceptions as you pass through time.

***

I was a Guristas operator, working out of a minor, unaligned asteroid colony in a system of really no repute at all. After years in my line of work – I was only twenty-eight but I’d started early, having developed the necessary business acumen as a teenager and had the required set of morals beaten pretty soundly into me as a child – I had come to the conclusion that nondescript, monotonous but decently populated locales were the best places to do my kind of business. Everyone here walked with their eyes to the ground and their ears clogged up with asteroid dust. Most of what I did involved oversight of nearby transactions, the kind where I linked up one person to another through channels I made damn sure were safe from prying, and acted as intermediary, facilitator or occasional pacifier, depending on the situation. ‘Nearby’ is even a misnomer; the distance between me and my customers was measurable in astronomical units, and I was very good at keeping tabs on the locations and movements of everyone I did business with. On occasion someone would dock at the station and request to see me in person, but I was well enough in with the local station operators that I always received plenty of warning and, if necessary, backup.

I was surprised one night when a call came in over the local line to inform me that a team of allegedly Angel-affiliated operators was to dock at the station and had requested my assistance. I was free to work with anyone I liked, so long as the Guristas got their due, but people explicitly affiliated with the rank and file of other pirate factions were loath to seek out my business. When they did, it was usually out of desperate need rather than convenience.

The call included verified contact details, which was normal, but also single-use encryption keys for their positions within the Angel hierarchy, which was rather out of the ordinary. I ran those and they all checked out. The group captain, a woman called Hona, was member of a special operations squad within a little-known branch of the rather extensive Angel hierarchy. It was a vague enough title and rank that I couldn’t make out what her real job was, but since she was working here on the outskirts and willing to meet with nonfaction black market personnel, it was bound to be interesting. I agreed to the meeting, and as it was only Hona who wanted to see me, requested that the rest of her team be given good accommodations well away from the tumult of the mining grounds. I was always open to new business relationships, and having the clients’ first memories be of sleepless nights and trembling furniture was not a good idea.

We met in a local bar whose owner had considerately set up isolation booths, both aural and electrical. I arrived first and took a seat with my back to the exit – I wanted to project a comfortable, slightly trusting relaxation, and besides, if I was unsafe here of all places, it wouldn’t matter which way I faced when shots got fired. I did discreetly place a small scrambler on the middle of the table; no lack of faith in the bar’s isolation tech, but I also wanted to project the feeling that I knew what the hell I was doing.

The beating of a tattoo on the floor told me that she had approached. From the muffled hush behind me a calm, crisp voice said my name, and I nodded in acknowledgment without turning in my chair. She walked around me and took at seat at the booth, directly facing me. There was a dominant air about her – it’s been so long I can barely remember what she looked like, except that her face was set in determination as well as something else, creeping towards exhaustion.

“Welcome,” I said. “Drinks or anything?”

“Just business,” she told me.

“I hope I can help.”

She nodded and said, “So do I,” in a tone that didn’t quite imply a threat so much as an inclination not to suffer idiots lightly.

Humor, even in the darkest of circumstances – especially in those, really – was a major asset in any potential business partner, so I decided to test the waters a little. I shrugged and with a nonchalant air said, “If I can’t, well. Shame.”

She shrugged in turn, and seemed to accept this. “If it’s not your own fault, nothing to be done.”

I agreed.

Then she added, “If you do mislead us, of course, we’ll send death squads after you,” and I decided I liked her.

It took a while for her to explain the particulars. The basic case was simple – undercover Angel recruitment agents had been turning up dead – but the real details lay in what they’d done thus far to find the culprit. Hona did not want me to waste time following the same tracks. As she described the precise work she’d undertaken to find the murderers, I was fascinated, first by the clear and definite purpose with which she had followed up on this – the murders had been particularly vicious and taken place in areas not safe for Angels to be in, so even recruiting people to her squad had been an undertaking – and then by the meticulous way in which she’d investigated what few leads she’d found. At some point I admitted to her that I would have a hard time improving on her work, and she took my compliments in good grace.

She was charming. Presentable, assertive, in control. We got on well. As the evening wore on I found myself revealing to her a number of options that I had not even considered mentioning for the fee her superiors intended to pay me. I openly discussed, without breaking confidentiality, the extent of my connections and the abilities they lent me. She told me about life in the Angel Cartel, not only as an agent of theirs but as a regular person living on colonies under their aegis.

We had drinks. We got on even better. She had signed up for the Angel service because, she said, she wanted to control the world as much as protect the people in it. Also, kick people in the teeth. I was here, I found myself saying, because it was a safe place, netted with webs of communication that I could – there was that word again – control, and yet remain at a safe distance. She understood this. She was good at talking to people, and at appearing tough enough to exercise an authority that she often did not have. We agreed on the loneliness of space. Where our careers would take us, we each admitted that we had no idea.

We did not end up sleeping together. We wanted to, and so we didn’t.

But at the end of a long evening and a long night, we decided that she and her team would stay on station for a couple of days. We had found in each other a capable, intelligent person, and we were convinced that together we could develop a plan to root out the criminal Hona so badly wanted to find.

It took a couple of days and a couple beyond that, and I had to get in touch with more people than I had expected to, but finally we acquired sufficient data to develop an extensive plan of action. It involved a series of inquiries in neighbouring space, interviews and investigations using multiple local contacts, heuristic searches through vast repositories of local data that I had access to, and a definite possibility of bringing in added manpower and weaponry in case Hona found herself outmatched by the criminals. We were going to present it to her team that evening.

Then I got a note from her saying that they’d received an unexpected lead: one of the recruiting agents in a nearby constellation had lost his partner to yet another messy, horrible murder, but this time there was evidence the culprit might still be in the area. She had to go. She was sorry, but she had to go.

I never answered the note. She knew where I’d be if she needed me.

***

The next time we met she stumbled through my door covered in blood. My immediate shock was the sight of her, the poor tattered thing; quickly followed, to my shame, by a shock that she had made it all the way to my quarters without me receiving any advance warning.

I didn’t bother to say anything, but helped her as gently as I could to the bathroom. One of the compartments there held an assortment of healing agents, coagulants and such, including a few expensive plexiglas syringes that held different types of nanomaterial. Some of the items I had in there were expensive and even bordering on illegal, but I hadn’t bothered to hide them. I’d figured that if I ever needed to access to this stuff, I couldn’t expect to be in any shape or condition to burrow into any kind of secret compartments.

Hona was cut and burnt all over, but the biggest immediate worry was a deep gash on her leg. It was still bleeding, so I reasoned she must’ve had access to some kind of basic medical help along the way – she would’ve bled out otherwise – and focused my attention on it. The obvious conclusion of the focus she must’ve possessed to reach me in particular didn’t occur to me right at that moment. I sprayed her with local anaesthetic and sprayed my own hands with a sealant that formed a second skin, lest I touch the anaesthetic with my bare hands; then smeared a disinfecting coagulant into the wound. It stopped bleeding after a while, to my immense relief, and I got out the clamps. Her head was turned to one side, but I shifted a little to block the leg from view just in case. Once I’d stretched the clamps to match the wound and fixed them to the skin, they gave off a burning smell and started retracting, pulling it together and sealing it with immense local heat. It was not the most pleasant of sights – the skin blistered and dripped at the mouth of the wound – but it was a million times better than watching Hona bleed out on my bathroom floor. Once the clamps had properly sealed the skin they dissolved into the leg, where they would, at a much slower pace, continue to seal up and heal the wound underneath.

I glanced up at Hona, only to find her staring right at me with unblinking eyes. Her mouth was slightly open and she was taking shallow breaths. She’d gone into shock. I gave her a little smile and stroked her cheek, then took hold of her hand and slowly stroked that as well. Whether she noticed the small patch I affixed to the inside of her wrist, I don’t know, but in a few moments her breath slowed, and not too long after she drifted into sleep.

She stayed with me for several weeks. Try as I might, I could not get her to tell me what had happened, other than that it had involved the murderer she’d been after. That person, she said, had been brought to justice. I sensed there was quite a bit more to it than that. She, in turn, got frustrated and then annoyed at my curiosity, and didn’t hesitate to let loose when she thought I’d done enough prying.

It wasn’t a good time. She recovered from the initial, physical shock – her wounds healed remarkably fast given how serious they’d seemed at first and how little proper medical care she received both before and after coming to me – but there was a deeper-set trauma that neither one of us were ever able to properly deal with. It wasn’t just shock; it was a nervous breakdown, something I realized the first time Hona woke up screaming and then had brought home to me when she sullenly refused, then and later, to discuss anything in her past. Not just the incident, but anything else prior: Her career with the Angels. Her past team and what had become of them. Us.

She was not a woman who would allow herself to be helped. She needed it – she’d come to me, I reasoned, because I could give her a balance of safety and trust on one hand and anonymity and distance on the other – but she hated it, and I bore the brunt of her frustrations. All the sides I’d seen of her in our initial meeting came out reverted, turned in on themselves. She continually attempted to dominate our relationship, or whatever it was; in words, and in actions as well, using her secret past as excuse to go into shrieking arguments over issues of no importance whatsoever. At times she’d treat me like an underling, someone to order around. Other times she’d obsess about our safety, continually asking me about the security mechanisms in my quarters and on the station, then freaking out when she thought she perceived gaps in them. She was good at using words, and when she put up a front there was nothing I could say to pierce it, good or bad.

We slept together, sometimes. We didn’t always want to, but we did.

Despite her intermittent worries over security, there were times when she was amazingly nonchalant about her arrival on the station. My own questions about potential repercussions or chase went unanswered outside of brief, slightly condescending comments from her that there was no risk hanging over us. When I finally did look into the records of her arrival – it took me more than two weeks to even get to that point, caught up as I was with her arrival and the change in her personality – I was astounded to find that there was no registration, no check or mark, nothing whatsoever denoting that she had even arrived in this area of space, much less crawled bleeding up to my doorstep.

The anger I took in good grace. I’m sure I yelled back just as much, though that’s not the point. She was changing. I could tell, easily, even though in truth I barely knew her, so I was sure she could tell, too. Sometimes, in peaceful moments, I’d see her stare out my window, at the colony outside and at the protective atmospheric shielding and the stars beyond it; and I’d see something in her face, either shifting about or, possibly, slowly settling. She was on her way to somewhere. She was shrieking because she was moving too fast, but she definitely had some manner of destination. Even with the arguments, and the petty games, and all the rest that we could never have borne for a long period of time anyway, it hurt a little that this destination couldn’t be here.

Why I took it, well … I knew that I was getting to know another side of her, one she’d not have shown to many other people. Even in all the tumult, I still respected her; I saw a woman trying her hardest to deal with events that had clearly stretched her mind beyond its breaking limits. I wasn’t unfamiliar with screaming arguments and fights – I’d ended up at this colony, in this job, for a reason, and even though I’d progressed far since those ugly childhood times, I still had coping mechanisms ready for use. I did get upset, as anyone would, and I did feel hurt and let down, but I retained my perspective.

Besides, I knew this situation would eventually change, one way or another – for her, or for me. If I had been entirely happy with my life on the station I would likely have been more protective of it and less inclined to let Hona in. In reality, I had been growing so dissatisfied with it – especially since that initial meeting with Hona, when I’d had it hammered home just how lonely and meaningless this existence was – that I knew my own time on the colony was increasingly limited. So I kept my anger in check, allowing it to slowly rise and strengthen. I wanted to leave, sometimes, just pull up stakes and disappear, but I knew that if I dared, I would leave behind in Hona a guilt that would never be extinguished. She would think that she drove me off, and I couldn’t allow that, because now matter how badly we got along – and how much I wanted her, all at the same time – I knew that this was not about me, or about us: It was, in the end, solely about her. That face, growing increasingly peaceful between the rages it was forced to express. That stare, seeing other planets. And that strange body, healed too soon from terrible damage, hidden too easily from electronic eyes. Something else, more than human.

One day we woke up together. She turned to me and whispered “sorry.” Then she kissed me with warm lips, open eyes, calm breathing. It tingled, and afterwards I lay in bed, stunned, more peaceful than I’d been for a very long time, far beyond her arrival in my life.

I didn’t hear her when she left, but I knew. I left soon after, myself, on some road of my own.

***

When I awoke, I was in a cave, surrounded by lit torches, and there were people standing around me. I grinned at them.

In the preceding months I’d been drifting about through various regions of space, trying my hand at different jobs and different lives. I’d had enough money saved up that I could leave any place whenever I liked without fear of starvation, but my natural ability to develop and make use of connections came to the fore, and I found that I was able to settle in nicely wherever I decided to stop. Eventually, though, I’d grow unhappy with whatever life I’d set up, and disconcerted at seeing old patterns arise again. I would isolate myself, no matter how big or welcoming the crowds around me. I saw all people eventually as collections of usable traits and potential benefits. I sought a general control over life that the universe wasn’t much inclined to let me have, so I ended up applying it only to myself, and in the process disengaging from other people before they could start poking through the shields I’d put up.a

During the drifting it did on occasion occur to me, yes, that the one person in recent memory I’d had a different relationship with had been Hona, first because we connected through an understanding of our own loneliness, and then later when her raw, exposed, confused self was too taken up by its demons to bother with faking it from me and my own. I never reached out to her, nor made any attempt to find out what had become of her. I figured that in time, if I was meant to, I’d find out; and besides, the way the woman had covered her tracks when coming to me, there wasn’t a chance I’d find her unless she wanted to leave tracks.

It finally happened when I was headed through Angel space. I received an anonymous request for a meeting that ended up bringing me to a large asteroid in the middle of nowhere. Just as I was about to turn the shuttle back, it malfunctioned. First engines, then pathfinding. Then life support. The oxygen lasted amazingly long, really; I breathed easy the whole time. I knew it was her.

They brought me into a city of stone, encased somewhere in the asteroid. Stalactites like cathedrals hung suspended from the ceiling. Past the center, on the outskirts, in an area where people spoke in hushed voices, there was a building – a hollowed-out stalagmite – where they led me and left me to wait alone.

Hona was there.

We talked for a while. She sounded distant; not for lack of commitment to our conversation, but as someone who now lived somewhere very far off from the rest of us. She explained to me how she had come to be there, how she’d come to terms with what she’d become and, once having reached that level of honesty with herself, had begun to be honest with the world at large. She had accumulated fellow thinkers – she did not have to call them followers; I understood what they were – and they had found themselves drawn here, to this living rock. I asked them how they got food and oxygen here, and she said the rock provided. I enquired whether they were as safe from prying eyes here as she had been after her accident, and she said the rock gave them all the protection they needed. I told her she was being maddeningly vague and she said me she didn’t know what in the world I was talking about. Torches burned on every wall, casting their arcane lights on her.

The people in this place, she explained, did not worship gods, but powers and universal forces, and looked to her as the conduit. She did not attempt to explain these forces and I did not ask. When I said, only partly in jest, that this made her a demigod, she looked at me for some time with the strangest smile on her face. I met her gaze and smiled back, and it took me a while to realize that whenever I blinked, I still saw her there. Somewhere in the dark of my head, where my eyes couldn’t go. She asked me to turn around, and I did. She was still there. When I asked her if this was magic, she laughed, a beautiful laugh, and shook her head.

I told her I was glad that she’d found the place meant for her. When she tried to shrug it off by saying it could’ve been anyone, I interrupted.

“It’s perfect for you. You’re in control, you get to plan and think and care for other people, and you belong to a system greater than yourself; greater than anyone, really, given the way you’ve described it. I don’t think I know anyone who’d fit this role so perfectly, let alone get through the initiation ritual the way you did.”

“You think what happened to me was a ritual?” she asked.

“Not in a preordained sense,” I said. “I don’t believe bad things happen for a reason. But I think it brought you to a place you might not have reached otherwise. And I think you’re proud of it, and of yourself. That’s why you invited me here.”

“You think I brought you here to brag?” she said, looking immensely amused.

“No, dear heart. You’ve no interest in acknowledgment nor compliments. You brought me here to show me you were all right,” I said. “And I think you are. I think you found the end.”

She nodded her thanks. I stayed a little longer, but we didn’t say much more. I enjoyed being with her, and she with me, and we exchanged thoughts that went beyond language. When I finally did leave, I did not need the acolytes to show me the way out.

***

I’m still headed somewhere. Haven’t quite found my way there yet. It’s alright. She’ll be there, however long I have to take.

I still see her when I close my eyes.

Rust Creeps

I’d had a tiring and frustrating day, the kind you don’t even want to mull over once you’ve lain down in your bunk. There are too many days like that, these days. You close your eyes and what you start seeing is too much for a tired old man to take, so you keep them open instead, you look out the viewport at the unblinking stars, and you listen to the silence.

That was what brought him to mind: The silence, or rather, the impression of it; that velvet cloth laid gently over the air. It never is truly silent on the ship – the mind merely learns to block out all those little noises – but you don’t hear the other crew members much. The ship is built to muffle the sound of other people going about their off-hour lives. This is good; it gives you a little privacy, and keeps you from losing your mind if the person on the other side of the bunk wall in your quarters has a sinus problem or likes to sing.

No, the only thing you hear in that near-dead quiet is the ship itself. Adjusting to space. Gently balancing its mass distribution and heat. Stretching.

I hadn’t listened to it for a long while, not consciously, but it felt soothing after the long, rough day. This was not a tour I had wanted to sign up for. Our dubious mission aside, the ship itself was not the best and certainly not the most well-maintained in the cluster – even Eren would’ve had a hard time with it – but we all have our dues to pay. We all have our dues to pay, and Eren, who paid dearly, he knew how to listen.

***

Eren and I first met on a similar tour years and years ago. The technology at the time was pretty advanced, obviously – I live on a goddamn spaceship – but still not nearly so much as it is today. There was, in particular, a dearth of reliable automated repair systems, which is a major problem for a type of transport that involves shifting a highly complicated piece of technology through an extremely simple and deadly medium.

On ships like that, good hands-on engineers are worth their weight in any precious metal you care to name. The best ones tend to be more in tune with their machines than they are with the crew, and they get plenty of leeway both when it comes to proper procedure and working conditions. Some people have a problem with that. I don’t. My ship’s purpose is to get me to wherever I’m going, safe and sound, and forcing some guy to alphabetize his spare parts instead of doing repairs isn’t really going to help.

That ship was having a hard time of it. We’d managed to avoid taking damage – I think we were transporting some bulky cargo, and we certainly weren’t kitted out for combat – but something, somewhere, kept breaking down and slowing our way. Nobody on the crew could fix it, not even the people supposedly brought on as specialized repairmen. Eventually our team leader announced that we’d be docking a few systems away, a detour that would add considerable time to a schedule that was already far delayeddue to all the breakdowns. I openly wondered why we were going to all that trouble; if there was a special team for us to pick up on that station, or special equipment that could detect the flaws in our machinery, or what.

My boss at the time said there wasn’t. There was just this one guy.

We hauled ourselves to the station and sat there for half a day. I was put on assist, but I never even got a chance to talk to the man. They sent me instructions on how to prep the repair area, which mostly involved me crawling all the way into the bowels of the ship while lugging a bunch of heavy gear with me. I deposited it in the manner I’d been ordered to and waited around in case he’d need anything else, but when someone entered it turned out to be my own boss, who told me to get the hell out. Eren couldn’t be disturbed, he said.

I grunted, got up and left. For some reason the walkway lights had been dimmed, to the point where I had to feel my way along the handrails even to see where I was going. I took slow steps, muttering to myself in the darkness – not something I usually do, but it had been a long shift and I was too tired to keep my mouth shut. It wasn’t until I’d made it to the exit that I realized what my own stupid voice had nearly hidden from my ears. Someone had been whispering. Someone had stood stock still in that dark corridor and whispered, either to themselves or to me. I turned and glared down the walkway, and just as the door closed on the engine room I saw that stranger – and I knew it was that Eren guy – walk through it, one hand trailing over the metal surface. The vision is still burnt into my memory: A younger man silhouetted in the door, his face looking up at the bulkhead opposite with that puzzled expression people have when they’re trying to work something out, his posture that of someone young enough not to have to worry about it just yet.

Of course he fixed the problem. He stayed onboard for a few days before getting off at our next port of call, and nobody spoke to him. We weren’t ordered to leave him be, but he gave off that kind of awkward loner vibe; and anyway, someone who could just walk in and do what he did was not necessarily someone you’d feel safe around. Geniuses – not just highly talented people, or the lucky ones, but actual bona fide geniuses – tend to attract either attention or trouble. At that period of my life I felt it would be best to avoid the chance that either of those might splash on to me.

I didn’t see him for years after that, nor did I think much about that time. I was doing well. I’d had the good luck of signing on to safer vessels, which is probably the reason Eren remained absent from my life. But everything breaks down eventually, and after a long haul through dangerous areas with not a lot of time to waste, we called on him to patch up our broken machines. As it turned out, I was the only man who had ever worked with him before – if you can call it work to lay out the instruments and scuttle out before the band starts to play – so I was automatically assigned to do the same. This time I did get to meet the man, and while he was very reticent to talk – and I certainly didn’t push him – we got along well in our own quiet way. He looked a lot more worn than I’d imagined. I remember being amazed that I’d ever thought he could be younger than me, for he clearly wasn’t, but then my sighting hadn’t been under the best of conditions, and heaven knows we all fall short of God’s glory in full daylight. I enjoyed watching him work, and didn’t wonder how he managed to find the exact fault in the mess of steel and insulation he was fairly buried in. I think he sensed this, for after the work was done and Eren long gone, I got a commendation from the captain, and was given to understand that if ever they called on the man’s services again I would be expected to act as his assistant.

To my knowledge they never did request his help again, but then I didn’t stay with them long. I’d had enough of the weightless life – there is perfect gravity on ships but in some sections they need to shift you a little to the side to accommodate for their designs, and walking on walls will get to you after a while. Instead I signed on to a colony in safe space, working at a refinery that enveloped well over half the asteroid it was located on.

Truth be told, it wasn’t more than a few years before I was thoroughly sick of that life, too. I guess if you make the jaunt into space, and take to it, you cease being the kind of person that takes root anywhere at all. Nonetheless, no decent tours were on offer, so I stayed on and patiently did my job.

The break came from the strangest of places. A ship docked, which was no great news, but surprisingly it was without cargo and had no trade agreements with the colony’s ruling corporation. They did need repairs, they said, but we could offer them no men or equipment that they did not already possess on their vessel.

What they wanted was me.

They needed the services of a specialist, they said, and were on route to the system where he was located. It was quite a few jumps from here, but the expense was negligible when compared to the losses they would incur over the upcoming weeks and months if they didn’t stop having breakdowns right in the middle of tightly scheduled deliveries. Supposedly this specialist was worth the trip, but he would only sign up if an assistant were brought on as well. Someone who had extensive mechanical experience, but more importantly, someone who had worked with him before. Someone like me.

I grabbed the chance. Packed my things, signed the waivers, got to know the crew and settled in for the long haul to see Eren.

When we met, I was rendered speechless. If I hadn’t seen him a few years earlier, I would have thought decades might have passed. His hair in particular had noticeably thinned out and greyed, and there weren’t so much wrinkles as deep grooves in his skin, etched there by pressures I hoped I would never have to experience. All his movements had taken on that slow, methodical pace one sees in people who’ve gotten too old to have the energy for mistakes.

I decided right away not to mention it – you can’t turn into that kind of wreck and remain unaware of how it shapes you – but did my part in the ensuing repairs by making sure his tools were always where he needed them and often just a little closer than he really needed to reach. I didn’t think he saved a lot of effort from that arrangement, but I had the distinct feeling that having the tools closer than usual would make him more mentally comfortable, as if they created a small safe space with no room for outside influence. A protective circle, really.

He seemed to like it. We didn’t talk much at first, but as the days passed – mostly spent waiting for replacement parts so we could get on with the actual repairs – Eren opened up a little. Besides, we were in the deepest parts of the engine rooms, the ones where everything is exposed, and you really don’t spend time with someone around machines that can potentially kill you without developing at least a little camaraderie.

Actually, it’s not entirely truthful to say he opened up – at least not to me. He simply let his guard down. Two days in I noticed that a quiet murmur I’d assumed to be part of the ship’s own thrumming heartbeat was, in fact, coming from Eren himself. I peered closer – all ship cores are gloomy and dark, probably because if you don’t know by heart where every single moving part is now and is going to be in five seconds’ time, you shouldn’t be down there anyway – and saw that he was talking to the metal itself. He was talking to the ship.

He must’ve heard my breath stop, because he fell quiet, leaned back and said, without looking, “They say things.”

“The … parts?”

He shrugged. “Or the ones who touched them last.”

“Ship parts come from all over the place, often from recycled ships,” I said. I’d meant to imply that he couldn’t possibly know who these people were, let alone that they were even alive anymore, when I realized what he was saying to me. If there truly were voices, they weren’t on our side of the veil.

I swallowed dry air and asked, “What do they tell you? How to fix the ship?”

He nodded.

It really was very dark in the engine room. “What do they … want in return?”

He shrugged. “To talk. To be heard. For someone to remember the stories of the dead, of this ship and all the others where their parts have been used. Or even places where this ship has docked, places that no longer exist.”

Those places would have been in space, unorbiting colonies, very possibly pirate ones, and very definitely long since fallen prey to capsuleer fire. Deaths, and more deaths; and once their graves had been picked clean by the attackers, the only usable things left in the wreckage would have been those parts.

Capsuleers went through frightening amounts of ships and even colonies on a regular basis. I wondered just how many ship parts had been salvaged from the dead. How many voices wanted Eren to hear them, all moaning in the discordant choir.

***

Late that same evening I was too restless to sleep. I ended up using the ship’s dataline and looked up a few things, which satiated my curiosity but eliminated any small chance I would sleep that night.

There were, amazingly, other people like him; but then, in this vast universe, everything has to exist somewhere. Psychomancy, it was called. They could tell things from machine sounds, working them like the entrails of a shaman. The buzz, burr, shear and whine; the way the rust stretched its coarse surface over them.

More than anything, the mention of rust unnerved me, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The next day I mentioned it to Eren.

He responded, “It’s true. And I don’t like rust. It creeps. It distorts.”

“You mean it makes it hard to hear the, uh, voices?” I asked

“Oh no. It doesn’t muffle them. They just … come out distorted. As whines, or these shrieky, tattered howls. Imagine the rust was on your vocal cords,” he said matter-of-factly. “Imagine it going into your lungs. It’s a cancer.”

I couldn’t help it. “So Minmatar ships…”

“…can go right to hell,” Eren replied with a grin. He added, almost absent-mindedly, “All ships are haunted. It’s like a sea we’re on, this vast and cold sea. Voices always drift to the warmth.”

“You ever think about signing up for repairwork on a colony instead? I can’t imagine this kind of life is easy for you,” I said.

He gave me a look, but in the gloom I couldn’t see it clearly. “Don’t like to work colonies much. Too many buried there.”

I got the distinct feeling there was more to that comment, and I really didn’t want to pry into the matter any longer. It’s bad enough working in the gnashing darkness without imagining things that aren’t even there. We finished our work for the day, and we didn’t speak of the voices after.

The next day turned out to be the final one in our stint on the ship. A part we’d been waiting for was finally shipped, and I installed it for Eren. I said to him, “I honestly don’t know how you’re going to get this one going. The team’s replaced this part three times already, and it simply refuses to work.”

He looked at me for a while, not unkindly – I couldn’t tell if he was amused or if he was listening – and then he leaned out, and he simply touched the damn thing.

The breathless hammering we heard shortly after was one of the crew running into the room to ask us what we’d done and how the hell we’d done it.

***

I lay there in my bunk, thinking of that time so long ago. It was the last and only occasion we’d worked together. I had expected to be called out again, and Eren certainly hadn’t seemed averse to the idea, but the quality of repair technology had caught up and the services of people like him were in less demand – either that or they were being assigned tasks complicated enough to eliminate the need for a simple machinist assistant like me.

I did see him once more, years later. On a colony somewhere, in a place I left shortly after. I barely recognized him at first; it was like he’d been shunted head-first into old age, his body matted, wrinkled and eaten up by time and whatever other forces worked on that poor man. I didn’t say a word, but he acknowledged me with a nod.

“Tt’s the rust,” he said. He thought it over, nodded to himself and repeated, “The rust. The rust creeps.”

I couldn’t help but ask. “Still the voices?”

His eyes were rheumy and blinked too often. The skin on his hands slid like oil on water. “I haven’t heard the voices for a long time.”

I was still trying to understand this, and the implications of it, when he added, “I hear what’s beyond them now. There’s something else. There is something behind them and it never falls quiet.”

His voice dissolved to a mutter. I didn’t know whether it was directed at me or the machine. Or at whatever lay beyond, which surely knew that he could hear it.

All his hair had fallen out except for the bushy growths over his eyes and in his ears, and I could see the veins in his hands.

I lie here on my bunk and I think of him. That old soul in that rapidly dying body, and the things he listened to. I think quite a lot of Eren, these days.

Because the ship creaks. The ship creaks, and we are going into empty space, and there is a patch of rust in the corner, and I wonder if my old friend is calling for me.

Tattoos

While body markings and modifications appear across all cultures in New Eden, it is the Minmatar who have taken that most ancient method of body marking, the tattoo, to a whole new level. To the Minmatar, the tattoo is not simply a form of art, but rather an integral part of their culture and customs.

The Tattoo in Minmatar History

When the Minmatar Empire was in its heyday, before a single Amarr ship ever darkened its skies, the Minmatar had truly made the tattoo into a form of high art. It was said the best artists could breathe life into the skin of an individual with their work. Today’s works, although still beyond what other races can achieve, are mere scribbling compared to the greatness of their predecessors. The Minmatar tattoo artists of today are forever seeking to regain the knowledge and skill that was lost to them when the Amarr, during their occupation of the Minmatar, issued an edict banning the practice.

This was a savage blow to the Minmatar, for a Minmatar’s tattoos proclaim who he is, where he came from, what he does, where he has been and what he has experienced. They represent a Minmatar’s identity as well as his story. A Minmatar without his markings is not considered a Minmatar at all. Such a one would be as alien to the Minmatar as a universe without God would be to the Amarr. In this, as well as in myriad other ways, the Amarr began to erase the Minmatar’s culture and identity, converting them into more pliable slave stock.

During the millennium of enslavement, the Amarr all but eradicated the tattoo culture. Nevertheless, it managed to survive in various different bastardized forms until the Great Rebellion, when the Minmatar finally threw off their shackles. What followed was a long hard struggle for the Minmatar to regain all that was lost to them during the occupation, and within the context of this endeavor the culture of tattoos was given primacy. The Republic of today is enjoying a renewed ascendancy of this ancient art form, with the tattoo once again representing an integral part of Minmatar culture and being.

The Tattoo Today

While the forms and styles of tattoo vary across tribes, the structure and culture behind the art are surprisingly uniform, making it a strong source of cultural bonding between the tribes. For the first few years of her life a Minmatar infant has bare skin, and it is left symbolically so. When the infant reaches a certain age she is given a temporary naming tattoo, which identifies the child and tells which clan she comes from. This temporary marking is renewed as the young Minmatar grows. It is the only tattoo a Minmatar child is permitted to wear until the Voluval.

The Voluval is the sacred coming-of-age ceremony for the Minmatar. It is here that the individual transforms from a child into a fully recognized member of their tribe. At the height of the ceremony the presiding shaman will finalize the ritual by invoking the Voluval mark, where the soul and destiny of a person are said to be revealed through the emergence of a tattoo on the recipient, the secrets of which are closely guarded by the Vherokior mystics who kept it alive during the long centuries of subjugation.

The Voluval is considered the most sacred mark a Minmatar can carry, and in some rare cases can change his life irrevocably. Although the significance attached to the Voluval mark has waned considerably in today’s Republic, certain marks can still see the recipient cast out from his clan and tribe, and conversely certain marks can lend the bearer much acclaim. In nearly all cases, however, the mark falls somewhere between these two extremes and the bearer moves on with little effect.

After the Voluval ceremony the young Minmatar will receive her permanent naming mark which will reside forever on her face. This mark will identify the name, clan and tribe of that Minmatar, plain for all other Minmatar to see. In such a way, two Minmatar meeting for the first time can immediately know these fundamental specifics about each other.

After the Voluval, the markings the individual will carry can vary greatly depending on the course of his life, where he travels, his occupation and what great achievements, if any, he has made. Each will reside on a specific area of his body – a person’s ranks within their occupation and their clan are usually displayed on the shoulders, for example.

In modern society many such tattoos are covered during day-to-day affairs. For example, Republic Navy personnel will wear uniforms with rank identifiers, but their true mark of rank is considered to be their body mark, even though this is not usually displayed. The culture of tattoo is truly ingrained into the Minmatar mindset, pervading nearly every aspect of their society.

A Minmatar cannot bestow upon herself just any tattoo. In some cases she may be able to influence styling and shape, but she cannot add a tattoo without having first earned the right. Inking a tattoo upon yourself without permission is considered a grave crime and offenders are subject to severe judicial punishment. Because of this arrangement, a Minmatar who is heavily tattooed is more respected by her peers, which will allow her greater opportunities to advance. Her experience is there for all to see.

Through this near-constant long-term process of tattooing, it is sometimes necessary for a tattoo to be removed or replaced with another tattoo. Since Minmatar technology is very advanced in this area, removal of a tattoo is extremely simple, with a pinpoint-precision surface laser wiping clear any unwanted area. There are times in which a Minmatar will symbolically choose to use the old method of skin removal, which carries the side effect of leaving large, highly visible scars. This is particularly prevalent when changes of allegiance or other actions of heavy emotional investment occur. (It is especially common after certain judicial punishments, for example.)

The Gallente find the culture of tattoos somewhat barbaric and uncivilized, and early on tried to persuade their Minmatar neighbors to drop this old custom and embrace their future as a civilized nation. Their efforts to this end were initially met with polite denials and later with derision, but interestingly the Gallente youth now find the custom fascinating. Indeed, it is not uncommon to see young Gallente teenagers sporting tribal and gang motifs lifted from their Minmatar peers, symbols of whose true meaning they have little to no knowledge. This can evoke anything between high derision and outright hostility when those so inked encounter true Minmatar.