Jita 4-4 – Part I

It’s after 9 PM at the terminal when I arrive. Most shuttles are switching out 15-minute schedules for 30-minute ones now. People draw together and wait, struggling to distract themselves in the seemingly endless space between. Bars, vending machines and VR booths fill every corner large enough to house them, offering up a quick, easy and overpriced escape from the intentionally gray concrete walls, illuminated only in the cold monotone of fluorescent lights. Pale and bloodless in this false glow, everyone looks like a vampire, something I would describe as convenient.

Now begin the dead hours, when things start to calm down, if you could describe anything here in those terms. Jita 4-4 may be one of the busiest hubs in the universe, particularly for the capsuleers, but the eternal dominance of the circadian rhythm makes itself known even here. Fewer shuttles leaving now? That’s the station slowing her breath. Really it’s us, our collective breath, but in everything now is the human imprint – for better or worse.

One rule is that you can’t sleep here. For me, tired of travelling through a haphazard network from a station out deep on the frontiers, this particular custom is unfortunate. You see, despite my much younger exterior, today marks a much older birthday, and without getting too technical about it, I haven’t slept in over three days. I’ve kind of forgotten how right now, and there’s that moment in the lull, that seductive daydream that creeps up on me when I least want it.

Nevertheless, when in State space, I will do my best to behave. This is because the massive roster of station attendants, security officers and “information advisers” will actually wake you and remind you, as they like to say.

“Ma’am, I would like to remind you that there is no sleeping allowed in Terminal 1.”

As if you’d actually forgotten. As if you intended to lie there asleep and vulnerable, while anonymous passers-by sidestepped your defenseless, lifeless body. As if you wanted to fall into that trap. As if you were, well…cattle.

They take a note, you see, and attach it to your Temporary Station ID. That’s your first and only warning. The second time you drift off they don’t say anything, they just start the clock. If you wake up before ten minutes is over, that’s two. Three is either ten minutes, or a third nod-off. You think I’m kidding. You think there’s no way they’d bother with this shit. Well, everything has its protocol, its hard parameters, its bottom line. Well, where are we again? Exactly.

Three times converts those little annotations into a vagrancy charge. Offenders are removed roughly, quickly and without a word. Vagrants don’t deserve to be read their rights, because by definition they effectively have none.

Now, I remember a few decades earlier, everyone would fall into this trap. There were the actual vagrant types; dreary-eyed Minmatar with the signature Sooth Sayer drool, clearly homeless and reeking of their own shit, and then there was the Caldari businessman, upper management type, rules don’t apply they think. Usually their first time here from some outer-regional post, Lonetrek or something like that. Even those guys, dressed in suits worth more than the yearly salary of the three men unceremoniously hauling their still-waking, highly confused, designer-label-clad asses out of here: even the mighty could be treated like the lowest. Nobody though, as far as I can see, has stumbled just yet.

I’ve come here to remind myself of the Caldari. And that’s also why I take the stims.

There’s the enjoyment factor, sure, but it has more to do with my aversion to cold cement streets and the types of people who roam them until dawn. There’s vampires out there, too. Blame the circadian rhythm, or something.

As for what I’m doing here, well, let’s just say for now that I don’t want to fall asleep. In actuality, this has little to do with what might await me out there, and more to do with my lack of Temporary Station ID.

We’re all supposed to have one, you see. Otro Gariushi’s was 19, the first civilian number available on the rotating register. Even he, Otro Gariushi.

My first stop is the food court. The primary one, that is. The one the size of four Mind Clash arenas, that dominates the entrance to Terminal 1. You can’t miss it, in that the place simply isn’t designed that way. It’s a four by nine kilometer sprawl of gastronomical consumerism like you’ve never seen before.

People come here just for this.

Everything you could ever want, from the fast and nasty (there is actually a vendor, or two, that run by this name) Minmatar bread-soups, to the most exquisite fine-dining on the mezzanine.

There’s nothing quite as fresh as Jita.

Jumpdrives brought about some amazing changes. They helped us reshape our world with dramatic speed and efficiency. Here in Jita at ground level, though, I’m reminded of the ways we’ve bent this technology towards more base means.

I say this because I can smell another human imprint, and it’s something like the salty tang of freshly caught fish. Maybe just a little over an hour old. Back then, full of life, swimming upstream towards nothing under one of any number of alien skies. I follow the scent and pretend to be able to discern where: which planet, which continent, which settlement. Perhaps somewhere in Urlen, I consider, near one of the polar settlements, where the magnetic fields create these wondrously hypnotic purple skylines with clean, bright stars shining through the thin atmosphere. Perfect low-cost real-estate for entrepreneurial fisheries. Must be even cheaper now, I realize, given the proximity of the planet to market hubs, and the latest CONCORD madness allowing capsuleers to drop extractors wherever they damn please. Forgetting for a moment what I am, in some ways, I´m back to imagining rivers of pure glacial water, artificially rich with the most economically favorable species of the month.

Then I imagine that fish, driven only by blind instinct as it slides inexorably down towards some dark fate. I imagine an inevitably murky and cold end; a net, perhaps, but it’s somehow not likely to be that romantic. These artificial rivers tend to be quite literally purpose-built to the end, with the flow of water eventually heading right towards the abbatoir. The Caldari have made it efficient to the point where you have to question their use of the word “fishing.”

What’s important though, is that from this stream it finds its way to a warehouse, maybe 10 minutes or less, as these things tend to be built into the actual rivers as well (at least if we’re sticking to the Urlen fisheries).

Another 20 minutes and that fish is loaded onto the cargo bay of a freighter, and then perhaps swims around for a few hours inside giant plastic-lined bags filled with life-sustaining fluids, waiting for the launch. Then, most likely our fish dies somewhere in orbit, if the acceleration out of the atmosphere is a bit rocky. A space elevator is most likely just as inevitable here.

After at least another 10 minutes, it’s at a station (and this can be pretty much anywhere in the known cluster if you have a long enough cyno net [and the best traders always do]).

After all that… all those hours spent dying, loading, launching, warping, docking… after all that, our fish is in something with a jumpdrive.

Within seconds it’s here and in the hands of some of the Federation’s finest culinary experts, where those succulently smoked and sautéed and skewered atoms permeate the domed terraces, filtering out downwards before they’re slowly muted by the dull mix of cheaper breads and spices. I try to imagine just how many different atoms, from how many different planets, must be colliding around here right now. Cosmologically speaking, Jita must be a meeting ground for them like no other place ever before it, in all of human history. All because of isotopes, cynosural fields and jumpdrives. Think about that the next time you’re dropping off for a bite.

Because it’s important to realize how some things come about.

I’ve come here to remind myself of the Gallente. If you ever doubted the capitalistic might of their corporate giants, you should make a visit here too sometime. The entire area is dominated by their cuisine, which in a way makes sense, since Gallente food accommodates everyone. It has to. If you ever thought politics or laws were the primary concern of an infinitely fractured populace, think again. Think about tonight’s dinner. I know I am.

One of the great accomplishments of the Federation’s food services industry was the way they managed to slowly absorb their competitors. They did this through subtle and well-applied use of the nation’s media influence, which extends across all empires’ borders. A predictable tactic, sure, but effective as anything. They don’t play the Caldari corporate game either, and that actually gives them some advantages when operating in State space and abroad, even during the “wars” when everything is supposedly turning to shit.

I suppose the most insidious thing about their commercial success isn’t the level of trickery employed on their own consumer base, but rather, the more fundamentally repugnant facelessness of it all. To survive economically in your opponent’s commercial nexus like this, you have to lose your face. You have to become about something entirely impersonal. You have to become about a system, about a way of doing things.

This is why people will talk about the diversity found in Gallente cuisine. That’s one of the darker sides to it. To most people this is perceived as something slightly simpler. They say that the Gallente have copied every other nation’s cuisine, made fusions and called it their own, branded it as their own. This captures the essence of the issue, but doesn’t identify the core.

These people say that we’ve arrived at the point where it’s no longer even clear who owned what anymore (hyperbole: trademarks keep that perfectly clear, if only for the lawyers – most consumers don’t even understand the most rudimentary networks of corporate ownership). The favorite topic amongst economists is the strange way (particularly strange to the Caldari) the Gallente economic model worked on pushing everything into the public domain and then recycling it, again and again, making it just different enough to justify the trademark. This is part of what I mean when I say they don’t play the Caldari game. But again, people overlook how it was accomplished.

It’s not all they overlook, either.

You see, for most people at Jita 4-4 and abroad in State space, it’s enough that the logo on the restaurant they’re eating at is a Caldari one, and for the Gallente business owners and entrepreneurs, it’s enough that a little playing pretend is all it takes to keep dishing out foods of every type as they attempt to corner (or, most commonly, invent) another niche in this already hypersaturated market. Everybody knows the game, but their apathy to such things is well ingrained.

Take the Salted Amarrian Rockjaw.

Now this thing is a beast of a creature, quite familiar with the interiors of Amarrian torture chambers, too. It has a rather sweet taste, with a fresh salty aroma to the flesh. You can have that at Dieurelli with a side of Achuran Songbird wings in a sweet nut-and-berry sauce. This meal, to anyone there who eats it, is unquestionably Amarrian. It is a tasteful, politically correct marriage of Empire-State cuisine. Perfect for high-profile business lunches you want to keep hiccup-free (depending on your clients, of course).

A little further down, off the high-rollers’ mezzanine and into one of the many corridors spinning a nebulous web below, you can get more adventurous with the Rockjaw at every corner. At Pmokka Caravan Delights you can have it seared over a traditional Brutor Khari oven, then watch as it’s slowly de-skewered and served alongside tender pieces of traditional Pator Steak, bloody and still rich with life beside their impaled counterparts.

Some meals speak for themselves and many, do in fact, have something to say. This one says “I am unquestionably Minmatar.”

But in every one of these restaurants, all you will ever see is pretty Civire girls waiting tables, with the silvery circular logo of the State out front. Meanwhile, in the engine room, it is most often Gallente chefs who will be driving things forward. Not just at Pmokka, but at Diurelli, and almost anywhere else you care to look behind the curtain. The Caldari think they’re exploiting the labor of the Gallente, and the Gallente think they’re influencing Caldari culture, one mouthful at a time. The Amarr and Minmatar? Shit, they aren’t even really here. They’re just ghosts; puppet apparitions dancing to the tune of friends and foes up north.

And this… this hasn’t ever really changed.

I’m opting for a low-profile bite-and-run here, though (and keeping my mind off the steaks…) so I stop off at QuafeSnacks. The food here is, I suppose you could say, the very bottom line. It’s not like Quafe hides it either. They have QuafeSnacks Premium and QuafeSnacks Premium Ultra vendor stands, and Quafe Deluxe, Quafe Deluxe Premium, and Quafe Elite restaurants plastered all over the courtyards as well. If you’re at this particular franchise, you don’t really have any illusions as to why.

Personally, I find a sort of perverse, gimmicky joy in watching the families order and endure. Most of the food here comes exceptionally cheap, you see, but there are no tables and no seats. The consuming crowds have to disperse and eat amongst the milling populace, at tables and ledges near elevators, escalators, walkways, and – best of all – in waiting rooms packed with people killing time on empty stomachs.

All designed, you see.

The bags that carry their food project subtle holograms above: a small news ticker, the current air temperature, arrivals and departures, station announcements. All to the side, all but consumed by the cool neon green of a Quafe logo. Then there’s the perfectly manufactured scent of it all, the look of satisfaction and enjoyment.

It’s the best way for me to blend in, you see, become just another billboard.

Yep, you can do pretty much anything here. Except sleep.

It’s a non-starter for me anyways. If I fall asleep, then they’ll see soon enough. They’ll notice the sockets at the base of the neck, telltale signs of trouble.

While pleasantly dreaming, I’d be giving them an excuse, a reason, a motivation to look closely enough, and they’d realize quickly what I am. In these situations where we are uncovered, alone and incognito, lurking amongst the masses, they find it easier to just shoot us.

When capsuleers are involved, it’s the only path with a predictable end.

If they woke me, and let me know that they know, well, who knows what would happen next?

I could be loaded with nanite viruses, armed with invisible spy drones, laced with biological contaminants. Who knows?

Maybe…

…I’m here to take a hit contract on some civilian in the crosshairs of a person with too much money and some serious grudges. Just walk up to them as they amble tiredly towards a shuttle and then boom, spray, bang, zap…who knows, but it’s lights out either way and I’m laughing all the way to the nearest clone bank.

I could be here to solve all kinds of problems. Or, I suppose, cause them.

Whatever it is, it’s assured by default that whenever a capsuleer is trying to blend with the baseliners (b-lining, they say – rather repugnant if you consider it) it’s not because they’re here to mingle.

Besides, the mechanics of it all are for them the same as mine. They have the authority to act with lethal force at a moment’s notice. Against us, that is.

Hidden, uncovered, that is enough. Beyond that they have impunity.

Me, us, we always had it – so they get to catch up. A dangerous game I don’t want to play. Some of you would just not believe the rumors I’ve heard. The stories of opportunistic savagery unleashed upon our kind when nobody who gives a damn is looking.

I hope a kind yet firm bluff will be all it takes. I know exactly what they fear, even better than they do. This counts for a great deal. I understand their countermeasures, and when you know their paths back to safety, you command attention. They, sadly, only have one go at this. For me this is practice. Something to keep my senses sharp after a long while doing nothing much, just mixing it up. Blame the circadian rhythm.

As for what I’m doing here, now, deep inside a sub-basement level following two Brutors who smell of alcohol (made from fermented Amarrian wheat, I establish, but keep to myself)… well, I’m following the scent. I’m here to remind myself of the Matari (always preferred that term).

But more specifically, I’m making a purchase.

More particularly, drugs, and to be explicit, we’re talking some quite rare ones that have, curiously, become far cheaper in recent times… ‘recent’ meaning, here, in the weeks, months and years following the wormhole openings.

Strange, right? Well, see anybody complaining, making a public scene out of the fact? Exactly.

C3-FTM (C3-fullero-tris-methanodicarboxylic acid, in case you wondered) – I used to have to go to the mezzanine for this, and I remember how awkward it would be to order such tiny quantities in ushered tones, surrounded by an opulence that outstripped the value of my purchase by an order of magnitude. Obviously, the situation of demand and supply was complicated back then.

Now all I have to do is hook up with the local Minmatar smugglers, follow these two Brutor, and soon enough I’ll have a whole fucking crate for the price of the meals I used to have to order as a disguise.

Maybe you understand now that I am no cynic to be asking: what’s the catch?

Following these two along this dimly lit artery towards some unknown destination, I´m listening to a crisp, momentary tone as it’s played out through invisible loudspeakers embedded into the walls, perfectly audible even down here in the bowels of the station. The two Brutor look over their shoulders at me for an explanation; they understand the game, but they don’t get the language. I shrug a “nothing you need to worry about” and keep the pace down the darkened corridor.

It’s interesting that they grasp this much. Perhaps the operation here isn’t so reckless as I initially thought. My immediate suspicion is that I’m about to run into one of my own kind. Or, at least, another capsuleer.

Close enough.

That’s one of the games, you see. Or one of the ways they divide us, class us, speak to us…look at it how you want. I see a game. In these momentary audio blips there is another, secondary message, a heavily compressed meta-stream lying obfuscated beneath expertly crafted static and white noise – all of it neatly engineered into a fleeting, innocuous bleep. Inside each one there’s often quite a horde of information. Here, in this one: a neurovisual map marking VIP elevator access points, secure comms lines, security posts, and of course, advertisements for restaurants, accommodation and other venues that are all kilometers above where we are now, and with price tags to match.

It’s one part Survival Guide to B-Lining and one part Here’s What You’re Missing Down There.

Maybe now you understand, too, why I wasn’t about to explain this one to my Brutor guides.

“That? Oh, it was an advertisement for 4,600,000 ISK shoes, and a map showing twenty-five of the quickest routes out of here.”

These guys just stare ahead and continue briskly along a hard right into a sharply twisting staircase that drops rapidly below what I just thought had to be the bottom of the station. I’m beginning to wonder how close we are to the surface, to the vacuum outside. Everything is quiet save for the low hum of ventilation ducts, occasionally rattling a new breath of hot air through these dimly lit catacombs. I imagine it all coming apart for a moment, and imagine surviving. There is comfort in the thought. After some time we arrive at a door. The two men stand beside it as it opens inwardly. I move to step inside and just from the way they both turn towards me, I know that this is as far as I come.

Staring inwards from the outside, I’m met by what appears to be a plainly dressed Vherokior seated behind a desk with wooden antiquated drawers that sound like they’re run on ball bearings. She’s writing something out on paper. Surrounding her are rows after rows of bookshelves, each filled with crates of drugs – and, from what I can see, the odd weapon too.

I reel instinctively, before I can even restrain the impulse.

She notices this and smiles, lowering the pencil. She’s dressed like a commoner, it seems, but the way she carries herself and commands this strange scene screams money and influence, and comfort in deception.

“Yes, we’re a bit old-school here,” she says, looking through the licks of her perfectly straight hair, arranged traditional Vherokior style, no jewelry (unless you count rubber bands).

“So much for not leaving a paper trail.” With the copycat pretension of it all, I can’t help screwing with her a little bit. Tension is adrenaline and adrenaline is good; it keeps you awake.

“C3-FTM?” she inquires, ignoring the jab. I nod.

“Of course, glad to help.”

“The cost?” She can tell I’m not really asking, that I don’t need to ask. She can see the subtext.

She nods in turn. “Not much, these days.” I hold her gaze. “You seem curious about why, hmm?”

“I suppose you could say I am,” I tell her.

She waves me inside. “Then we can probably help each other here. Come.”

I step inside as she opens another door at the rear of the room, and follow her into a narrow hallway lit by cold blue beams, all of them reflected in meticulously designed angles across the cavernous metal spaces above us, perfectly placed as though everything is ricocheting along the straight, rigid lines of Caldari steel (perhaps I should say Caldari Steel, since it’s their product here). Something that looks like a turret is trained on me as I follow her, swiveling from its mount in the ceiling as it slowly spreads a web of red light over me.

Not sure what that just was.

“Is this still about C3?” I’m asking, raising my hands out of antiquated instinct. The Vherokior is looking over her shoulder at me as she slides out of the dirty robes around her, revealing a head-to-toe capsuleer’s pod suit beneath, black with white linings. Must by a YC111 style.

“Of course,” she replies. “We can speak in confidence here, you do realize?”

I don’t.

We reach the end of the hallway and stop at another door. She looks at me strangely. I can see a sense of revelation slowly growing in her expression. I’m supposed to be realizing something here too, but well, that could be any number of things just yet.

“You’re home, amongst company,” she says quietly, sensing the reasons for my hesita as she stares about this strange room before us, but there’s something practiced about the way she does it, and something definitely wrong about the way her eyes follow me wherever she looks. I think she recognizes me.

“No,” I say. “I think you’re mistaken.”

“I’m not here because I’m,” she begins, leaving the rest for me to fill in as the door before us slides away. “I’m here because I know a Sabik when I see one,” I hear her say, just barely.

The room ahead of me is supposed to be a lounge of some kind, but I recognize its double use as someone’s bedroom (not hers, a man). She stops at the edge of a few small steps leading down to a sunken central area, furnished only by a large, circular couch, overflowing with blue and purple cushions. I think she is motioning for me to sit, perhaps, but she is leading me away down one side of the room towards a ledge. Something else I recognize. Silver panels stretch across the top, adorned with tiny glowing buttons of various colors.

Understated. I like it, but I keep this to myself (she probably noticed anyhow). Each color is clustered in groups of four (that’s Synth, Standard, Improved and Strong variants) and arrayed in pleasantly cascading rows.

I want to keep the bloodstream legal as possible, so if she offers–

“Synth?” she asks, already at least one step ahead of me. She spins around to face me, her left hand now resting on one of the panels; pastel sky colors gradating to a dark, inky ocean-blue. That would be Blue Pill.

“Tried the NOH variant yet?” she asks. I shake my head. “On me,” she motions. Her fingers lift away from the blues and float towards a panel of warm, orange lights. I’m reminded again of the first room I entered through. That would be Mindflood, and all four of her fingers now resting on the smooth bumps in the otherwise impeccably smooth surface. I suppose that’s her way of saying I won’t be the only one about to let my guard down. I stare as she presses down, and hear the pressurized shots of chemicals escaping from the tiny nodes.

“Slightly stronger, still legal,” she says, inhaling gently as she rubs her wrist and turns towards the couch. For a moment I regard the panel that houses the release button. Sky blue like the other, but with a tiny little NOH logo on top to differentiate. “Interesting,” I say as I indulge.

She glides over the edge of the couch effortlessly and takes a seat at what appears to be the head of it. I hadn’t noticed this in the design until now. I feel slightly dizzy as I climb over and seat myself at an acceptably middle-ground distance, not too close, not too far. There’s a stupid amount of cushions here. I feel like I’m in a playpen. I kick a few away from my feet.

“Make yourself comfortable,” she says.

“Strange setup you have here,” I’m saying before really considering it. “Kind of hard to.”

In truth, I am starting to sink a little into this thing and relax, but that’s more down to NOH’s latest pharmaceutical sleight-of-hand than this overcrowded cushiontopia. Cushionocracy. Yes, definitely thanks to NOH.

“I’m curious about C3,” the Vherokior says, almost absent-mindedly.

I’m curious about that Sabik remark, but I suppose we can get to that.

I turn to her. She doesn’t seem interested in staring games anymore. “What, in particular?” I ask.

“I just handle goods,” she says. “I don’t need to understand much beyond the basics. C3 is interesting though.”

Is it? I don’t even bother saying it. I can feel my expressions betraying me enough to make the point.

She looks at me like it’s some big secret. Some vast conspiracy. I’m not quite sure what to say.

I ask her how long she’s been a capsuleer. 3 years. That’s a good amount of time. Longer than I guessed.

I explain to her that C3 isn’t really a drug. You don’t get high off the shit. It’s a performance enhancer of sorts. You have to be able to know how to use it, though, and what it offers isn’t all that remarkable, in fact – only useful in certain situations.

She asks what situations, naturally.

Imagine, I tell her, that you are outside of your capsule, and what you need to do there isn’t all that complex. Maybe you need to meet someone, or want to get something to eat at a real restaurant, maybe sleep in a real bed.

Of course, this isn’t hard to imagine, really. We’re both unplugged right now. She nods, a slight sense of impatience about her. I give a “bear with me” sort of expression and shift up in my seat, kicking another cushion away. I can tell she’s getting progressively more high too, just by the way she watches it sail away over the edge.

For a situation like this, or at least some of them, I tell her, you don’t really need your childhood memories, or your knowledge of how to pilot Jump Freighters. And the more situational your needs are, the more you can narrow it down, the less you need to bring along.

She’s asking if I’m talking about selective memory, compartmentalizing different parts of ourselves into different areas (her word, not mine). I’m nodding.

C3 helps with this, I explain.

She seems genuinely interested in the idea. Whether because of its potential or historical application, I can’t tell.

This outcome is altogether quite surprising, although not at all unanticipated. Firstly, I’m still not convinced that these capsuleers (there are more here, and 5 exits, 2 unguarded) aren’t just posers, and this overextension, this trying-too-hard veneer isn’t just the surface-deep summation of who and what they really are.

I don’t pick them for it. But she said Sabik, which is an interesting differentiation to be making, even if I do have the unfortunate tendency of reading far too much into these often thoughtless remarks. I’m following the beams of blue light on their path around the room, wondering if she’s even meaning to screw with me.

Because part of this must be ego – my ego, that is, feeding into it, making this more significant than it is. Of course. Part of it. Part of.

Then, of course, there was that half-decade stint a few decades ago with the Blood Raiders, and then Sahtogas, and Mabnen, and all that. An irrelevant association in the grander scheme of things, but with our actions come various labels and categories, families and friendships, little tones on the loudspeakers that you either hear or don’t. I didn’t drink blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not a freaking Literal and Omir won’t ever have the pleasure of seeing my ass, let alone kissing it.

“Sabik, you said earlier,” I note with a stressed hesitation. “Meaning?”

Part of the reason it escapes my lips so perfectly neutral is because I don’t even have a clue anymore myself.

She’s folding her arms again and pushing off the seat slightly, taking an artificially long time to consider the answer. She can tell I’m after something important in the reply. She leans over and reaches out. A man I hadn’t noticed until now (another egger) is handing her a small metal crate, the vials within which I recognize, even though they’re slightly updated and… well, enlarged.

The tubes used to be millimeters thick at their very largest, usually much, much smaller, microns typically (in the early days, first contact). She is holding what appears to be over 7 liters. She eyes me all the way over, smiling in a predatory way as she offers the canisters, her emaciated arm trembling slightly with the weight.

This is a whole lot of shit, no matter what way you look at it.

“Meaning, happy birthday.”

Perhaps I’ve been moving too fast. Perhaps I’ve not explained enough for you yet. You don’t really understand where we are, what made it possible, or even what a capsuleer is. You certainly won’t appreciate what happens next until you grasp a few basics, and you’re far from that.

Well, that would be my intention, yes. But this is how I started out, you see. I’m not about to give you any advantages. Take it from someone who actually became a capsuleer, from someone who knows more than enough, that we all begin here – drowning in the deep end, trying to make sense of these things. Jita 4-4 is a good place to start. It’s designed to disorient you. If you can start to make sense of it, though, you will start to understand a great deal.

But try to understand, also, that I won’t make this easy on you, for the simple reason that it wasn’t easy on me.

Part II

I’ll take us back a little now, before Jita 4-4 even really existed, to the dawn of the capsuleer era. Some associates of mine at the time discovered that I wasn’t just good with their cloning technology, I was capsule compatible too. New arrangements were made. I was second cohort. Joining in the first rush would have drawn a little too much attention, you see, so I waited a year and joined in YC 106.

The first few hours of being a true, proper egger you don’t really remember. Not years later, not when everything you’ve accomplished leaves those early days as embarrassing reminders of your own primitive imprint on this most advanced piece of technology. Even for me, this was true.

Of course, not everyone feels that way about it. Some can recite their graduation days with this clarity that borders between eerie and pathetic, most often as part of some well-rehearsed yet banal anecdote about their “early days.” These are the sorts of people you see in the Navy.

My point is, you don’t really remember because you don’t really appreciate what the hell it is that you’re doing in that egg, or what you’re capable of. Not yet. You might remember getting pats on the head from some instructor agents, and the rush of your first few warps and fights, but that shit is all peripheral to this larger picture. That needs time to grow in your mind, and if you’ve got the right type of head for it, you’ll start to realize important things sooner or later.

The first thing to understand is that capsuleers can have the wealth of nations, the influence of nations, and most importantly of all, the sovereignty of nations.

Many of us get to this first point. There are countless numbers of us now, colonizing the outer worlds, building corporations and alliances that exist and operate outside the purview of the empires. Of course, the four nations are not exactly underrepresented up here. They have their own massive fleets, and there are many of our own kind who have taken their loyalties with them to the stars, whose patriotism has not been diminished by the drastic changes that fate has afforded us. Some are just scared of that endless dark out there, where not even CONCORD can protect capsuleers from their own kind. They have little to be afraid of and yet, so often, people – my people – claim that there is absolutely nothing to fear.

This is nonsense.

Which brings us to the second thing that eventually dawns, and on an diminishing scale now, down to the thousands. The second realization is that capsuleers can die. They are not immortal.

Many of my kind refuse to acknowledge this, but it is quite obvious. Standard capsuleer re-cloning relies on the use of mind-state transfer technology, which transfers consciousness from one highly controlled environment to another; Body A inside a capsule (an “egg”) and Body B (for Plan B) in a cloning facility.

The important phrase here is highly controlled environment. You can’t say it is anything else. A scanner pores over your brain, capturing every last thought, every memory, every personality defect, and it does this why? Because your capsule was breached.

Because someone just proved how fragile that egg really is.

And that cloning facility you wake up in?

That cloning facility is surrounded by some of the most high-clearance people in the field – these invisible caretakers who oversee the rebirth of the universe’s elite. They have a job with an importance like no other in our world, and with it, surveillance and monitoring you won’t see anywhere else either. They are the real bodyguards. If a corporate CEO is waking up in one of these facilities, his contingent on the ground have already failed, and this, the most sacred of contingency plans, now depends on the people in the white suits. Obviously, not everyone is comfortable with that, least of all us capsuleers who won’t often admit how tenuous our grip on everything really is.

Why? Because these people in white suits could make things go horribly wrong for you and me.

I think the reason we’ve started installing cloning vats on our largest, most powerful ships has less to do with logistics and more to do with trust issues.

Regardless, there are contingencies for such obvious threats, if you have the resources to implement them. The point to take away from the idea is that if your plan for immortality relies on you never having to ask questions like what happens when these become not-so-highly controlled environments, then chances are your plan isn’t really worth shit. Most of us still trust in the system, eating the crap served to us without ever really wondering who cooked it up, if you catch my meaning.

As for the third thing, we need to return to that moment of capsule breach, when your brain is scanned and transmitted via your capsule back to that facility.

The third thing to realize is that in this moment, the capsuleer has become data. Maybe only for a second, half a second, even less in reality, but for that moment we are nothing but 0 and 1 as we fly across light years of space in between heartbeats. It’s so short that almost nobody recognizes the importance of this moment, and it’s something only a few of us even want to appreciate.

The idea of the informorph.

The question: What if we just stayed out there and never returned to another clone?

What if we could live out there, and build a bright and better world in that space between?

Burnt

As the shuttle hovered towards the colony, Kanen looked out the viewport and marveled at the familiar terrain. He’d rarely seen it from this height, his face far too close to the dirt, and the last time he’d left the place he hadn’t been in a state to enjoy much of anything at all.

The towers poked out of the ground like nails dropped into sand. The colony stayed in intense communication not only with nearby colonies and travelling starships, but with authorities much farther away. Its operations were regulated according to policies that Kanen had never really understood. Sometimes the crew was worked harder than usual, and sometimes … well, sometimes nothing. They always worked hard. It was a question of calluses versus actual cuts.

Beneath the towers, the familiar rock and mud and mess. And, in the distance, the roiling magma that made it viable for human beings even to eke out a living on this rock. This was an active place, full of active people harnessing some very dangerous equipment, all sitting on top of what was effectively a big, crackling, active celestial volcano.

And beyond them, Kanen saw sky-wide nebulas streaking through all viewable space, dotted by planets in their thousands. Each one of those planets, Kanen reflected, by the sheer dint of their glow, would be large enough to eclipse his colony.

He looked down again. The burning glow from the magma reflected off the shuttle, casting it in red and orange hues.

“Goddamn,” Kanen muttered to himself. As the shuttle started to descend he felt the light pull on his stomach and hands, as if someone wanted him away from the seat and out of the vessel; out for inspection by the stars that watched his every move from above. Away from the colony.

***

The hardest part in anyone’s life isn’t the crises they encounter, and if someone tries to tell you different, it says more about their lack of spine than it does about whatever problems they’ve had. Anyone can have a problem, or make mistakes, or suffer a goddamn breakdown. The question isn’t what happened to you or what scars life inconsiderately raked over your hide – it’s what you did after. How you got up again.

***

He walked slowly through the corridors of the colony’s main operational section. There was no rush: he was expected by some people, and not by others, and he would take the time he needed to get this thing done right.

It was odd to be back, particularly without a task to work on. When you have been active for long enough in a particular place, you no longer see how it truly looks in brick and mortar, and instead experience it solely as the accumulation of tasks, needs, pauses and schedules at which you, of course, are the center. This giant wall, reaching to a ceiling many man-heights above, is no longer a wall; it is a route to someone’s office where that meeting needs to be held, or a support structure that will need to be relocated as soon as the company moves on to the mineable rock beyond it, or simply a quiet place where you can take a breather for five minutes in between shifts and bum a cigarette from a pal. But when you leave – not merely this place but the web of duties, actions and results it has woven you into – and then you come back, you come back to it as a dead thing. You stand outside the life it contains, like a ghost.

He walked down corridors that held few people, even fewer he knew and none of whom seemed to know him. A door at the end bore the moniker Betel Saraanen and the title Supervisor below it.

Kanen knocked and entered. A man sitting at a desk looked up from a slew of reports, blinked a couple of times before he recognized the visitor, and said, “I want you gone.”

“Don’t we all,” Kanen said. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. There was a chair in the room but he did not sit down, nor did Betel indicate he was expected to.

“I want you gone,” Betel repeated, “but there’s rumors of Sansha coming in, so we’ve got the usual panicky flights off-base, and the capsuleers have wrecked nearby colonies to the point where we can’t pull in new teams.”

“And the ore needs to be mined.”

“The ore doesn’t need the likes of you,” Betel told him, then confirmed with a sigh, “But the ore, yes, does need to be mined.”

Kanen stood there in silence, listening to the rhythm of the colony. The regular beats that drummed up through the floor proved the mining works were operating at full swing, and the occasional tremor through the wall against his back indicated that the explosives experts were gleefully earning their pay.

“So you better get to work,” Betel said at last. “The details are in your datapad.”

***

You don’t spring back to action. That’s what I learned. After breaking away, and taking the time off you needed to recuperate, you’re not exactly raring to go again. Rather, you need to slowly rev yourself up, like an old, worn, grimily oiled piece of mining equipment, spluttering and coughing in the poisonous air of the mines, sidling and sliding into action one more time. You haven’t had a broken part replaced; you overheated and were given time to cool down, but nothing in you is back to new. Just a little tattered, perhaps a little broken, and uncertain how much it’ll take before you give way again.

***

The workers’ changing rooms were a ways down to the far end of the colony. Kanen knew his allotment, locker and equipment had been left untouched, likely less out of respect than a feeling of bad luck. Miners cared about luck. They’d run out so often that they viciously hoarded what little they managed to scrounge.

There was a good while left of the current shift, and when it ended another one would begin. According to his datapad entry, Kanen had been assigned an area to oversee, but not a particular team of people; rather, he would be present along with any other midlevel overseers on shift to guide operations in that particular part of the mining grid and to jump in as needed when brute force was required. He could walk in at any time and start picking up the slack. The active team wouldn’t be happy, but that was no worry of his. The active team working in the depths of an unstable asteroid colony, floating around unprotected in deepest space, was not expected to be happy.

So it was with no pressure but that of the churning dread of guilt that he turned and headed not to the changing rooms, but to the living quarters on the other side of the colony. He got in at least a minute’s walk before a familiar voice called out his name, and a body marched straight up to him.

“Corwan,” he said to the approaching form. He walked on at the same pace. The younger man, who was about his height but rather less built, sped to keep up.

“Good to have you back, man,” Corwan said. He seemed about to slap Kanen on the shoulder, then reconsidered. “How you doing?”

Kanen gave him a look. “What can I do for you, Corwan?” he asked.

“Well, I’m just wondering. I’d heard you were back and wanted to see if we could have a chat about some, uh, staff issues.”

“If we could talk about staff issues?”

“Certainly.”

“Would those be,” Kanen slowly said, “staff issues that occurred before or after I pile-drived a massive operational piece of mining equipment into a pit full of an intensely, if briefly, surprised group of people? Are those the ones we should discuss?”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Corwan quickly said.

“It was very much my fault, unless you want to pick out someone in that pit as having deserved what happened to them.”

“No! No, no, not at all. But, uh, we do need to think about some changes that have been occurring here, or needing to occur, even before the incident. Are you coming back full time, by the way?”

“Supposedly,” Kanen said.

“As an overseer?”

Kanen ran a hand over his face as he walked, then shot the man another look. “Corwen, it’s not that I don’t appreciate having at least one person here happy to see me. But the mere fact that I’m back here in my old position, however temporarily, means there’s one less slot for you to grab if it’s overseer status you’re angling for; and don’t –” He raised a hand at Corwen, who looked very intent on saying something. “Don’t pretend that you’re not climbing, because we’ve seen you from afar, coming up, knife in mouth. So let’s skip all the camaraderie and the united front dumbass farce, and engage with the real issue instead. What is it you really want?”

Corwan was silent for a moment as they walked, visibly gathering his words. Eventually he said, “You can’t be gone.”

“I was gone for a while, son.”

“But you weren’t gone gone. They still held your position. Even before the Sansha rumors and the capsuleer attacks, they wanted you back.”

Kanen was impressed. Anyone who’d caused the kind of accident he did would have been out on his ass. He certainly wouldn’t have spared any member of his own team if they’d done what he did.

He quelled that thought. It would only lead to pride, and he had not earned that feeling. He hadn’t even earned relief, though he hoped the end of this walk, if Corwan ever let it end, would help him on that path.

Corwan continued, “I won’t get pulled up while you’re here. No one will.”

Kanen considered this. “That’s the point, isn’t it? You want me gone because I’m holding you back from promotion, but even while I’m here, at least nobody else will get the job, either.”

Corwan nodded miserably. “I, uh. I need a bit more time to iron out some issues.”

“Some issues.”

“Some issues with the boss,” Corwan said. “Just some… well, like I said, stuff I need to iron out.”

“Make your position clear,” Kanen said and couldn’t help a little grin.

“Yeah, I–” Corwan caught the sarcasm. “Anyway, yes, I’d like you here so I don’t lose out on a promotion to someone else. But I’m also glad you’re back.”

“Thanks,” Kanen said. He believed it. Corwan was a climber, but he wasn’t dishonest, at least no more than someone needed to be if they intended to make their way to the top by dint of being too oily to hold back. “We’ll talk about this later. I need to see someone else now.”

“All right. Thank you,” Corwin said. “And, uh. Welcome back.”

The younger man walked off, leaving Kanen to make the last of the trek alone. Despite himself, he couldn’t but appreciate Corwin’s honesty. The problem with career climbers was that everything they said tended to be tainted by want. There was the direct meaning of their words, which was always clear and usually more than a little flattering, and then there was the hidden one, the real motivation, which involved their own desires and which you had to discern like you were looking through a darkened glass. Having one of them break cover, as it were, was something to cherish.

He passed a few others on the way, and noticed the way they spotted him, but tried to ignore whatever they said. Snippets of one conversation did pass through his filters.

That’s him. Over there.

That dude?

That dude.

He’s the one? The guy who–….

That’s the one.

Oh. Wow.

There was a pause.

He’s old.

Kanen grinned again, and marched towards the personal quarters.

A knock on a particular door, a deep breath, and when it was opened by a woman her eyes went wide and she slapped him hard in the face.

He didn’t raise his hand to his cheek, though it felt on fire. Her nails had broken skin. “Hi, Beth,” he said.

“How dare you show up here?” she said to him in a voice so quiet it approached a whisper.

“Can I come in?” he asked. When she made no move to let him in, he added, “Beth, I’m back. I am going to be on the colony for some time.”

She glared at him, her lips pinched together. Then she stepped aside without a word. Kanen walked in past her, into the living room, and sat down on a couch.

It was a sizeable living room. The apartment was meant for two people.

“I don’t have a lot to say,” Kanen said to her as she walked into the room. She did not sit.

He added, “Not as much as I’m sure you’d like to say to me. Nothing’s going to help much. I just wanted to let you know I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart, and that I’m trying to make amends.”

“By coming here?” She stared at him. “You think you’re making amends by coming back… here?”

“I was asked to come back–”

“By who?”

“Saraanen. He needs people right now, and I’ve recuperated enough.”

“That’s nice. That’s nice. I’m glad someone has.”

“Beth, I–”

“My husband nearly died because of you.”

“If I could do anything for J–”

“Don’t say his name! Don’t you say his name. He was seriously hurt.” She looked away for the first time. “He’s still in there, on his white bed in that horrible room, and he nearly died. They won’t even let me see him except on weekends.”

“Has he … come back at all?” Kanen asked.

“A couple of times. We spoke a little, but he drifted off. They think it might be all right some day but we don’t know when, and the brain injuries mean he might not be able to…” Her voice sputtered, then failed her. She breathed deeply. “Why did you return? What can there possibly be left here for you, except more people to hurt?”

“I don’t know, Beth. Some way to show I’m not a tired old man who’s lost it for good and who puts his friends in terrible danger,” he said. It was an honest thing to say, or at least it felt that way to him, and for the first time in their talk she met his gaze with something that didn’t resemble hatred.

He got up. “I didn’t want to make this long. Just wanted to let you know, before you heard from anyone else, or saw me around. I won’t be getting in your way. But if he gets better, I do hope you will let me know. I really do.”

He turned and walked to the door. “Take care, Beth,” he said before leaving her quarters.

***

You know you have to go when you start to fail, little by little. The final break that pushes you out – which will always be terrible, and far more costly to other people than it was to you – is not some single event, some great explosion that is isolated from everything else. Not a single grand failure but a cascade of smaller ones that you just can’t grasp, no more than the pebbles falling through your hands. They add up and they keep adding up in a monstrous framework of dangerous failure until finally, by some banal coincidence, something finally tips the whole thing over.

And people get hurt.

All those little mistakes, the ones you wouldn’t have made if you weren’t so tired, and you want to say: It wasn’t me. This is not how I live my life. This terrible wreckage, this is not the work of a man like me. But you only think like that after the fact, and by that time you can no longer attract attention to what you did. You are advised, by those few who will still talk to you when you surface as a human being again, to ‘let go of the past.’ Let go of the past and ‘live in the now.’ Never mind that my past includes several decades of not fucking up, before everything started to slide, and that my Now involves an old man about to work on a ratty piece of equipment on the hard edge of a rock floating in deadly nullsec. To hell with the Now. I’d live in the past if I could; the view is infinitely better.

***

He walked on. He didn’t know what was driving him on: atonement or sheer stubbornness. There was one person who wanted him here, one who wasn’t sure, and one who wanted him dead and gone. If he did this, it wouldn’t be noble, but it wouldn’t be for a debased reason, either. It involved pride and selfishness, yes; but mostly, he suspected, it involved the need to do something – anything – with the rest of his time other than watch it pass him by.

As he passed into the corridors that would lead him to the changing rooms, he saw, through the glass alloy walls, the world outside this place. There were asteroid mountains in the distance, and beyond them, the sun shining bright. He felt the thrum of the earthworks as he walked on and on. And every face, even those who resented him here – and there were plenty – still showed a grudging respect, if only for the fact that he had lasted this long; he lasted this long and he returned.

He walked on, losing track of time. The harness of his old machine was there; he could see it now. It was empty. It was waiting for him.

Innocent Faces

The man in the garish robes and discolored wig was applying he last of his makeup when he heard a knock at his door. He scrambled from his seat and nearly tripped over his oversized red shoes as he scurried to the door, cracking it open to peer at the person outside the room.

“Cherall…I mean, Dr. Adad? Sorry to bother you, but you have a visitor. She’d like to meet you before your show,” said a lady wearing a headset and holding a large datapad. She glanced impatiently from side to side, tapping her foot.

“You know I don’t like visitors, Raha. Especially right before I go live,” he replied with a hint of agitation.

“It’s a sponsor’s kid. One of the holders in the Kor-Azor family. She’ll only be a minute,” Raha whispered. Cherall looked down and saw blond curls peek through the door’s frame a full meter below his producer’s face. He sighed softly before nodding his head and opening the door more fully.

“My apologies. Come on in, child.” Cherall shot a dirty look toward Raha, who offered a short smirk before bustling down the hallway. She spoke over her shoulder as she turned a corner: “Don’t forget, you go live in five minutes.”

The little girl looked up at Cherall with wide, green eyes as she stepped into the room. Cherall closed the door and smiled at her. The wide, red grin painted on his face accentuated his expression, and the nanite-infused compound on his cheeks glowed softly as various shapes illuminated around his cheekbones, spinning and bulging across his face. The little girl giggled at the sight, holding her hands in front of her mouth out of politeness.

“What’s your name, little one?” Cherall inquired, sitting down in his makeup chair gingerly, his knees cracking with the exertion.

“Fimiris,” she whispered through her hands, still staring at Cherall.

“Are you a fan of the show?” Cherall opened a drawer at his desk, rummaging through its contents.

“Yes, I am. I watch it every day.” The girl’s face flushed a dark crimson as she moved her hands behind her back and straightened her posture. “I named my favorite slave after Mr. Wayward.”

Cherall’s smile softened slightly as he continued to search through the desk, opening another drawer and sticking his hand deep into its recesses. “That’s very clever of you. Does your daddy mind that you renamed one of his slaves?”

“No, not at all. He finds it rather amusing, as do I.” The girl waved back and forth lightly on her heels as she talked.

After another moment of intense scrutiny, Cherall found the object he was looking for: a thin holopad with his likeness on it. He grabbed a pen and scribbled on the image before handing it to the girl. “That’s’ very nice dear. But remember, Mr. Wayward is a cartoon character. Your slave is a real person, so be sure to treat him well.”

He handed the holopad to Fimiris, who accepted it with a big grin on her face. She giggled again as the image altered and played a short scene of Cherall juggling bright, red orbs. “Thank you, Dr. Adad! I will certainly make sure to treat Mr. Wayward well.”

“You’re a sweet girl. You remind me of my daughter, you know. You and her would get along very well. Now, off you go. I have to get ready for the show.”

As the little girl left the room, Cherall glanced to a sign posted above the dressing room’s door. It was a simple wooden placard with blocky letters burned into it. The sign contained a short passage from the Book of Reclaiming: “Lead all children to the light of God, for Heaven is theirs to inherit.” Cherall stared at the inscription, deep in thought. After a few moments, his meditation was broken by the buzzing of a datapad on his desk.

* * *

“Children of God, do you know what time it is?” The voice echoed throughout the mostly empty soundstage. A chorus of high-pitched voices responded in unison: “It’s time for Dr. Adad’s Wild Time!”

Throughout the room, dozens of lights flashed on and hundreds of children’s faces appeared throughout the empty space, filling the area from ground to ceiling with holographic projections of smiling children clapping their hands to the upbeat music reverberating in the room’s atmosphere. The children’s images flickered as they clapped their hands in time to the music. After a few minutes, the clapping turned into full applause as Cherall entered the room, running onto a lighted stage and performing cartwheels and somersaults across its width.

Camera drones followed his routine from multiple angles as he flitted around the stage and spun wildly into the air. The music throbbed louder and the children’s applause intensified as Cherall completed his gymnastic barrage by launching himself in the air with the help of his gravboots – and floating back down to the stage floor with eight consecutive rolls in the air. He landed softly, raised his arms, and the music stopped. The children burst into applause all around him, their images flickering more intensely.

“Hello, children. I’m Dr. Adad, and welcome to my Wild Time!” Cherall bellowed to his audience, who applauded wildly in response. Cherall hushed them with a wave of his hand. “We have a very special show to you today, as we are filming this live from our studios on Nakregde II.” More applause ensued.

“As always, I’d like to begin this show with a prayer. Let’s bow our heads.”

Cherall’s painted face retained a solemn expression as he bowed his head. Inside the room, hundreds of holographic faces followed suit. Across the cluster, millions more children bowed their head in prayer as they watched this live feed, their parents smiling with bemusement.

“God, you are a gracious God, and a forgiving God. We do not deserve your blessings, and we submit our lives to you. You bring us joy and you bring us sorrow, but we endure everything in your name. Please grant us the wisdom and the courage to follow you to Heaven. Amen.”

Cherall tilted his head up and looked into the nearest camera drone.

“And now it’s time for the fun to begin! Unfortunately, Professor Playmate is no longer going to be joining us in the festivities: He’s back at school teaching the Theology of Fun! But not to worry, because his brother will be joining us, and I’m sure you’ll love Emperor Excitement.”

The audience was silent in response to this news. Cherall panicked briefly, beads of sweat brimming on his brow and laughed nervously. “But while we wait, why don’t we see what’s going on with Mr. Wayward?”

The audience burst into applause and many children whooped and hollered in delight.

A smile slowly crept upon his face. On the vidscreens across the Empire, children laughed aloud as his cheeks flared with glowing numbers, letters, and symbols, the glyphs morphing and moving along to a bossa nova rhythm that had emerged in the background. Cherall’s eyes followed the glowing symbols as best they could, crossing and uncrossing, twirling and darting inside his sockets.

The clown’s smile intensified as the camera drone focused deeper onto his face. The glowing symbols changed colors and swirled together, forming more complex images and figures. As the theme song continued its rampant rhythm, a person emerged among the glowing shapes: a tall Minmatar man, dressed in plain clothes and covered in tattoos. Two more figures emerged shortly afterward. One figure was that of a shorter Amarr man in elegant robes and pale skin. The other was a large, anthropomorphic furrier standing on its hind legs and wearing a dress. A title in big, animated letters zoomed over the heads of these characters: “The Adventures of Mr. Wayward and Friends,” followed by the subtitle, “Today’s Adventure: The Thief among Us.” Off camera, the children exploded into applause.

* * *

“Cherall, it’s Tadama. They took our daughter.”

Cherall stared in disbelief at the woman projected onto the vidscreen. Tears were streaming down her face and her auburn hair was hanging in front of her face in tangles. Cherall cleared his throat.

“Who took her? When did this happen? What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” sobbed Tadama. Her bloodshot eyes pleaded with Cherall. “They just sent me an image of her. She’s still alive, but they told me they’d kill her if I told anybody that she was missing. Except you. I think they want to reach you.”

Cherall stood up slowly, his knees creaking. He stood on wobbly legs as he moved to the nearest data console in his vast living quarters. “How am I supposed to contact them? And who exactly is ‘them’ anyway?”

Tadama entered some information on her vidscreen. She sniffed loudly and wiped her eyes with her hands before turning back to face Cherall. “I just sent you a contact number. They want you to reach them through there.”

Tadama glanced around her, panic in her eyes. Tears rolled down her cheeks and blotted her collar. “Cherall, you have to do whatever it takes to get her back. She’s our baby girl. And ever since you moved out…. Well, she’s all that I have left. I can’t lose her like I lost you.”

Cherall winced and looked down at his data console. His eyes were bleary and he grasped the console until his knuckles went white. “I’ll do what I can, Ta. Meanwhile, I want you to go to the police and…”

“No, I can’t do that. They’ll kill her if I do that. Please do what they want before–“

He raised his hands and closed his eyes, a single tear streaming down his face. “Ok, ok. Don’t go to the police. I’ll talk to them first and see what they want. Anything to get our little girl back.”

Tadama’s face softened, and she brushed her mottled hair out of her face, revealing her unblemished, pale skin – “God’s imbued essence,” as Cherall used to call it – beneath her wild, curly locks. Again she wiped her eyes, now raw from this repeated action, and smiled half-heartedly at Cherall. “Thank you, honey. I love you.”

Her ex-husband nodded his head and waved goodbye as he severed the call.

* * *

The nanites shifted into place, forming the words “The End.” The camera drone zoomed out to show Cherall’s eyes rolling around and around inside his eye sockets, feigning dizziness. The children again clapped and cheered as the camera continued to zoom out. When Cherall saw his full image again showing on the vidscreen monitors around the stage, he lunged backward into a complete triple back flip, and landed on one hand. Spinning in place, he twirled once more into the air before landing on his feet and smiling to the camera.

“So today we learned about stealing, and how wrong it is to steal from God’s Chosen.” He folded his arms in an exaggerated manner and leaned back on his back leg. “As God’s people, we Amarr are entitled to the bounty of God’s creation. The Minmatar, being wayward children, have not earned their right to God’s kingdom. Thus, they must live with the lot given to them by us, God’s chosen people.” Cherall raised his arms again. “That’s why Mr. Wayward was punished for taking Flonta Furrier from his holder. By stealing from his holder, he was also stealing from God.”

Cherall twirled in place, his body twisting violently as it gained momentum. He pirouetted in a constant motion and propelled his body across the stage, continuously spinning as he progressed in a figure eight. As he performed his signature “Spindlemas” dance to the children’s delight, a woman appeared at the other end of the stage. She was dressed in a long, white, flowing dress with a white parasol in her hand. Bright red flowers adorned her hair, and brilliant colors flashed across her dress as she tiptoed around the spinning clown.

The children laughed and clapped as she followed Cherall’s gyrating form, attempting to catch up with him. Finally, Cherall spun in place for several seconds, allowing the woman to sidle up to him. She stood on her tiptoes and extended her arm out, putting on finger at the crown of Cherall’s multicolored head. Instantly, he stopped spinning and beamed at the audience in shock. He turned to the woman and gasped. “Miss Melody, I can’t believe it’s you!” he exclaimed.

The woman curtsied. “Here I am, at your service, Dr. Adad.”

“Welcome, welcome. What do you have in store for us today?”

Miss Melody turned to the camera drone and ran to the front of the stage, dropping her parasol and holding her hands together. “Why, I’m going to sing you a song!”

Cherall ran up to stand next to her. “Do you mean it’s time for….” All the children in the audience screamed with Cherall in unison. “Miss Melody’s melodies?”

The audience applauded as Miss Melody curtsied again.

“That’s wonderful,” Cherall exclaimed. “What are you going to sing for us today?”

Miss Melody cleared her throat dramatically, pausing for a beat before answering. “Today I will be singing the classic hymn, ‘The Children of Heaven Will Gather Together.’”

“We can’t wait. Without further ado, take it away, Miss Melody.” Cherall bowed to her, then ran backstage as the first notes reverberated throughout the hall and Miss Melody’s pristine soprano lilted through the air.

When he reached backstage, Cherall found the nearest available chair and sank into it. He closed his eyes and took deep breath. He became lost in the song’s beautiful melody. As he sat there, listening to the music, he cried softly to himself.

* * *

Tadama looked at Cherall imploringly on the vidscreen. “Did you find out what they wanted?”

“Yes, I did,” Cherall replied.

“Well?” Tadama had bags around her eyes from lack of sleep. Her pupils were dilated and she had trouble focusing on the image in front of her. She drummed her fingers on the data console in ragged strokes.

“They want me to renounce my faith on my program and to cancel the show.”

Tadama stopped drumming her fingers. “That’s it? No ISK, no power deals, no nothing?”

“That’s it.”

“So when are you going to cancel it?”

“I don’t know.”

Tadama glared at his image on the vidscreen. She grabbed the nearest object to her – an urn – and threw it against the wall. “What do you mean you don’t know?” she screamed.

Cherall stood up from his chair, his knees creaking as he did. His legs were wobbly and he could hardly stand. “I just don’t know. That’s not my duty.”

“Your duty is to your family. Have you talked to Samne about this? The two of you have worked together for nearly 30 years now.”

“Samne’s dead.”

Tadama gasped. She looked around the room in bewilderment. “What? When? How?” she stammered.

“They killed him two days ago. The same guys, these ‘Bleeding Hearts of Matar’ terrorists. They’re a splinter cell of the Bloody Hand. They gave me this same threat last week.”

“Why haven’t I heard anything about this yet?” Tadama asked, her voice quivering.

“We’ve kept it quiet. We didn’t know what to do. The Theology Council has officially endorsed our show for the edification of the faith. We couldn’t cancel the show without explaining it to the Council.” Cherall sat down again with a heavy sigh. Across the vidscreen, Tadama followed suit.

After a few moments of silence, she started to sob quietly. Between convulsing breaths, she muttered: “What…about…our…daughter?”

Cherall sat in silence as he listened to his ex-wife’s whimpering. Finally, he said, “I have an obligation to my faith to–“

Tadama shot up from her seat and yelled at the top of her lungs. “Fuck your righteousness for once, Cher. They’re going to kill Prandi!”

Cherall remained silent, his head bowed in prayer.

“You’ll never see her face again because you don’t have the balls to upset the Theology Council. What God would allow this to happen?”

Cherall raised his head and looked Tadama in the eye. “’The road to Heaven is paved with tribulation. Those who remain with my flock shall never be vanquished. Their family shall be reunited in Heaven so long as they remain faithful to me.’”

“You’re a coward and a fool, Cherall. I’m going to the police.”

* * *

At the end of the program, Cherall stood in the center of the stage, a single spotlight shining down upon him. He smiled to the camera drones.

“Now we must end our show for today. Please bow your head in prayer, children.”

In turn, the children bowed their heads. In the air surrounding his body were the images of hundreds of devout faces peering at the ground or with eyes squeezed shut, their hands folded in front of their faces, and their lips moving softly and silently. Cherall followed suit.

“Dear God, you have taught us so much today. You have taught us about the sin of stealing; about your love for your children; about the sanctity of the body; and about the importance of faith. We pray for your forgiveness as we strive to understand your Word, and as we attempt to lead the life you have shown us. Please forgive us, for we are sinners. On our path to Heaven, we stumble; in our journey of faith, we get lost. But so long as we are found again, we are grateful for your blessing. Amen.”

The children raised their heads and stared at Cherall. Cherall, in turn, raised his head as well.

“And now children, I must leave you for today. Go forth with God. We shall be reunited soon with God. Remember that God loves us all. Good night, and we’ll see you tomorrow.”

As the children applauded for the final time that evening, Cherall looked around at all the faces surrounding him, the hundreds of visages floating in the air inside the room, staring down at him and smiling. A single tear rolled down his cheek as he continued to look at them, searching hopelessly for something familiar among all the innocent faces.

The Resurrection Men

By the time the beatings stopped, Rokan was barely even aware of what was happening. There had been rising increments of sharp pain, delivered to his ribs and his legs and his hands and his head, and then there was suddenly nothing but the dull, hazy, red-rimmed awareness of excruciating aches all over, fighting for their share of attention from his fading consciousness.

It was so late at night that even if he had dared to take his hands from his face, he wouldn’t have been able to see. All he heard was the sounds, like slabs of meat being bashed by rocks.

He lay there, hunched in on himself. In the part of his mind that had gone very cold and analytical, he was amazed to find that he was unable to move. Also, he was lying in a small puddle of water, so he should have been freezing, but his body felt numbly warm.

Daring the world to poke and stab, he cracked open one eye, then the other.

It was hardly worth it. He was in the same alley as before, with his back to its mouth and his face to the wall. He saw light glinting off the puddle he was lying in.

Someone took a few steps behind him. The glint of light was blocked out.

A deep, raspy voice said, “I believe this is our man, Mister B.”

A rather lighter and softer voice said, “I do believe you are correct, Mister H.”

“Shall I hoist?”

“If you would be so kind.”

Rokan was lifted up with such strength that it was as if he were weightless. Maybe he wasn’t paralyzed, he stupidly thought; maybe he had simply died back there and these were the collectors who’d come for his remains.

But his body was hauled out of the alley – one of his captors said, “Look sharp now, young man, you’re out of harm’s way” – and set inside a hovercar that pulled up and hummed quietly. Everything hummed quietly, inside Rokan’s head.

Coming in right after and taking their seats opposite him were two men in dark coats and hats, each at least a decade older than Rokan. Their faces betrayed no expression: They were neither cold nor confrontative but simply, Rokan assumed, at ease with who they were and with the purpose of what they were doing.

The warm numbness started to fade, and he gingerly tried to stretch his arms and legs. They obeyed, if creakingly. So he wasn’t paralyzed. It must, he reasoned, simply have been the fear.

The two men did not look as if they were inclined to speak, and the windows were shaded so dark that Rokan couldn’t see out, so his attention naturally turned to himself. He gingerly felt his face. His lower lip was busted, and one of his eyes felt swollen up.

The men apparently noticed this, because B regarded him for a moment, then reached into a pocket and handed him something. “Here. Put this on you, son.”

Rokan accepted the thing. He regarded it with careful interest. It was a small round patch, sheer but with faint lines crisscrossing it like a gossamer web.

“It’s a cure,” B said. “Electrodes will cool down the swelling, and the silk they’re embedded in will stick to your rather broken skin without harming it any further.”

Rokan nodded his thanks. He peeled off the patch’s protective skin and gingerly placed it on his face, as near the swollen part as he could tell. It felt nicely cool.

There was a slight bump on the drive and he winced, but his face didn’t throb as much as he’d expected it to.

“Where are we going?” he asked them.

“We’ll be there soon,” the other man, Mister H, told him in a dulcet voice.

Rokan shifted in his seat, which made little lines of fire crackle throughout his body like veins in a lava outflow. He could move, though, and no bones seemed to be broken. He wondered if he could bolt from the hovercar – they were clearly keeping to low speeds – but decided not to take that thought any further. Whoever these men were, they had saved him from a terrible fate.

Probably.

“Look, I don’t want to sound ungrateful,” he said. The two men regarded him with something resembling faint amusement. “But am I in even more trouble than I was before?”

“Lying in the street, being kicked to death by hooligans?” H asked him.

Rokan gave an awkward grin, feeling the skin on his face tear just a tiny bit. “They’re, uh. They’re maybe a bit more than that.”

H seemed unconcerned. “You have talents, young man. They got you into trouble, and we aim to have them get you out.”

Rokan closed his eyes and sighed. “Talents. So you know why they were after me.”

“Of course we do,” B said, quite jovially.

“I am not going to work for you.” He opened his eyes again and gave them what he hoped was a defiant stare, though its effects were somewhat spoiled by the need to keep looking from one to the other. “I needed to get into that vault, and I tried, and I failed, and they were probably going to kill me for it.”

B made a tch sound. “These people were amateurs who were going to beat you to a pulp. We really cannot abide that sort of behaviour.” He leaned in. “We have a proper use in mind for you, young sir.”

“Look … you know what it is I do,” Rokan protested.

“You break into secure places,” H said. He had not leaned in but was sitting upright; in fact, to the best of Rokan’s recollection, he not moved during the entire trip.

“I don’t break into them. I just…” He shrugged. “I undo the locks.”

“That place you were trying to ‘undo’ had some quite powerful, time-sensitive safeguards. Ones that are usually bypassed only by very complicated – and very expensive – AI procedures,” H said.

“Those aren’t that big a deal,” Rokan said.

They raised their eyebrows at him; not in admiration, he suspected, but rather in genuine surprise.

“Of course” – he rubbed his bruises – “I didn’t know about their backup systems. Or how quick the guards would come.”

“You’re pretty good at this kind of thing,” B said.

“When I’m not getting beaten to shit? Yeah, I rather think I am,” Rokan told them.

The car glided to a stop. They stepped out, Rokan waving off the offered support from his two rescuers and gingerly finding his feet on solid ground. They were in some manner of underground parking complex, cars all around them at regular intervals. Rokan had no idea where they could be. The walls were metal and opaque plastic.

“This way, please, sir,” B told him, raising an arm in guidance down one of the marked walking lanes beside the cars. “Mind you keep to the path, now. Some of the vehicles come fairly roaring in here, and we don’t want to put you at risk.”

They led him out, up a series of steps that led to a door. B arrived first and quietly stood in front of it. There was a hiss, then an extended pause, followed by a click as the door unlocked.

“Scanners?” Rokan asked.

“Cellular. Gaseous form,” H told him.

“Seriously? Why not ocular, or DNA?”

“Those rely on body parts,” H said. “Can’t trust them.”

They walked through the door, down a well-lit corridor that led them to other well-lit corridors. Eventually they went into a room that Rokan half expected to be terribly uncomfortable, like an interrogation chamber or a prison cell.

It wasn’t. It was smaller than he’d expected, and outfitted with a carpet on which stood three faux-leather chairs. Two of them were side by side, facing the third. Beside that one was a small machine, a square block with dials and screens, on top of which lay variously coloured patches similar to the ones he’d received in the car. The machine put Rokan in mind of the world’s first robot. The lighting in the room was pleasant, originating part from a large semitranslucent bulb in the ceiling, and part from standing lamps located in each corner. There were pictures on the walls.

“You can be at ease, sir. We only want to engage your services,” B told him.

He sat, and the chair quietly moulded itself to him. After the beating, and after the tension of the drive – where, he now realized, he had been scared rigid even though the seats had been quite comfy – he felt the tension at last seep out of him, as if he were a dirigible stretched full of air that had been pricked with the tiniest of holes.

“We want you to put these on,” H said, indicating the patches. “They will feel a little … grippy, maybe a little sticky for a moment.”

He hesitated, so B added, “Oh, don’t worry, sir, we’ll turn our backs.”

“Where do I stick them?” he asked.

“Anywhere you like. They’ll inject some things that can move around on their own.”

He leaned forward and gingerly pulled off his shirt, wincing when he saw the muddy streaks of blood on one side, where he’d been cut, and the red welts on the other, where he’d been repeatedly kicked. As he applied the patches he found they stuck pretty well the moment they touched his skin. They adapted to his skin in a manner he didn’t understand; after a little while he could barely see they were there.

B handed him a dry new shirt. He pulled it on and gave a pleasurable little sigh when he smelled its freshness.

“Who do you work for?” he asked them.

H, who was checking the machine, looked at him briefly and said, “A capsuleer,” then returned to tuning the machine’s dials.

The word raised such dread in Rokan that he felt as if electricity had been shot into his heart, doubling its beats and crackling out through his veins until it reached the skin of his fingertips. He gasped for air.

“Steady, now!” H said, raising an open hand with palm out either in placation or warning.

He took a deep breath. Whatever this was, it was bigger than he could probably handle.

B regarded him amiably. “Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

Rokan realized his throat was parched. “Yes, please,” he croaked.

B left the room for a moment, then came back with a glass of water. Rokan drank it down. It was wonderfully cold.

He looked at the machine, which H had finished tuning. It was silent, but several of its monitors displayed ever-changing figures. “Do I have to … I mean, what do I have to do?”

H said, “Nothing very much. At least not right away. We’re just measuring some of your basic abilities. Do you feel anything?”

He sat there quietly, checking for itching, strange bumps, odd internal pokes, or anything he might not be imagining. The two men took their seats opposite to him and waited.

After a while he took in another deep breath and sank a little further into the chair, letting the backwash of adrenaline envelop him. It really was very comfortable here.

“No. Nothing much at all.”

“Good.”

“So am I going to be working for this man?” He checked himself. “Is it even a man?”

They nodded. “You could be very useful to him, and to others of his kind,” H said.

He opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. From the looks they gave him he was sure they knew what he wanted to ask, but he tried to say it out loud nonetheless – for some reason it was important to him to ask how he could be useful, to take charge of his own usefulness – but his throat was parched again and all that came out was a croak.

“We are measuring your ability to handle certain types of stimuli,” B said, pouring him another glass of water from a transparent can. Rokan couldn’t even remember him having left the room to get the can. B continued, “The tests shouldn’t reach you at a conscious, perceivable level, at least not the kind we’re doing right now.”

“So what are they for? Is this a health check before I go on board?” Just the words go on board gave him a nice, warm little sense of freedom. He found that he didn’t care much about what he’d have to do. He’d be away from here; on a spaceship, out in the darkness. What an adventure.

B gave H a look, who said, “It’s a check, yes. We want to see if your brain can handle the pressure.

He liked their funny speech, and the odd way they emphasized things. “Like a capsuleer,” he said. He really felt very cozy. “Can I have something more to drink?”

B filled his glass while H continued, “Yes, precisely so. Capsuleers interface with modules in very much the same way that we’re having your body do now, albeit at a much simplified level.”

Rokan drained his glass in two gulps. A question popped into his mind, one that he’d never have thought – or probably dared – to ask.

“Why isn’t everyone able to be a capsuleer? If I’ve got talents…” He left the second question unasked, his voice trailing off.

B said, “Well, not everyone has the constitution. Capsuleering isn’t just sitting in a pod. It’s a thoroughly complex interaction of many different elements, mechanical and biological, that converge inside a person’s body.”

H added, again with that weird emphasis, that certain sections of the brainwere capable of dealing well with certain parts of that interaction. “It isn’t quite understood how they work, but we’re constantly researching it. Sometimes we find out how certain ship modules can be better adapted to the capsuleers, so that their output or function can be improved. But it’s hard.”

“I can imagine. Must be … complex,” Rokan said.

“Not so much, but it’s a difficult bit of …” H waved a hand, apparently looking for the term. “Reverse engineering.”

Rokan started to say something, but H plunged on. “There are a million ways to adjust the modules. We’re just not always aware of exactly how they should be adjusted. First we need to find a brain that’s capable of operating at better capacity than hereto identified, and then we know in what direction to take the technology.”

“Are these huge changes?”

“To be honest, they don’t look that grand on paper. Maybe some piece of equipment, some module in a spaceship, raises its output by five percent. But that alone can make a huge difference in interstellar combat. It may turn the tide of entire battles.”

“So you need candidates like me,” Rokan said.

“Precisely.”

“Am I going to get to meet the capsuleer?”

B and H looked at each other again. B said, “Mmm … I suppose that isn’t out of the question.”

Rokan thought all this over. “That’s awesome,” he managed. The three of them sat in silence for a moment before he found himself bound to add, “I mean, I’ll be happy to help you with your research.”

” I know you will,” B said, quite genially.

“But guys, I’m feeling really tired right now. Could we … sorry.” He leaned forward and rubbed his eyes. “Could we take a break?”

The fuzziness in his head was overwhelming. It felt as if the lights had been dimmed; and things glinted: the machine, the chair legs, the teeth of Mister B and Mister H, who were giving him big, benevolent smiles.

“Oh, it’s alright,” they said. “Rest now.”

The room really was rather dark.

“Rest.”

Anoikis

Imagine if the bars to your prison were all you had ever known.

Then one day, someone appears and unlocks the door.

If they have the power to do this, then are they really the liberator?

You never remembered who it was that closed you in.

- Ior Labron.

***

March 10th, YC 111.

Taking one last look at those unnatural shapes, the CreoDron board of directors slowly removed their Egones and returned their attention to the other figures huddled around the table. Everyone was waiting silently in the darkness. Those with ocular implants bowed their heads slightly, and the strange images faded from their mind.

“We only have these six so far,” a voice said from a speaker in the middle of the table. “But what you are seeing says enough. There is an 18% probable match, just from this one alone.”

A reproduction of the last image suddenly dominated the far corner as a large plasma-nanite panel came to life. The intense colors of the scene overwhelmed the dim starlight that filtered in through one of the clear walls, the pale blues of Carirgnottin I subdued by the glow of a deep crimson nebula on the screen, teeming with the lives and deaths of a thousand stars. The backdrop seemed to pulse beyond the silent and lifeless structures, drenching the entire room in a strange sanguine hue.

The clearest of the six, the image showed a ring of circular, dome-like structures, which would later come to be known as Enclaves. Each structure was connected by conduits that arched around to every other dome, joining the separate discs together at perfectly smooth angles. Scale was difficult to determine, but the entire complex was easily the size of a station. Though nobody would venture a comment, there were some who even then guessed that it was a city they were looking at.

A city of sorts.

As they stared in silence, each director’s eyes eventually came to settle on the imposing dagger-like spires that jutted out from the ring, their angles sharp and yet each edge beautifully smooth. There was no visible seam, no weak point in the gently overlapping and undulating armor. Eight of these spires towered over the rest of the area, standing watch like ancient protectors.

“Not ten seconds after our drone was sent in to capture this image, we lost the feed.”

“We need to send real people in,” one of the directors interjected, brushing the Egone before him aside in a less than subtle gesture of dissatisfaction.

The last comment from the superior was meant to have been dramatic. It was supposed to have humbled the subordinates into contemplative silence and sent them fumbling at the sheer scope of what had already been uncovered. The fast-moving minds of the men and women here shelved such concerns for now, however, and quickly prioritized other matters entirely, robbing their leader of his first contact moment.

In retrospect, the old man (as he indulged himself in being called) would appreciate the quick-witted minds of his “subordinates” and their own lists of concerns, particularly since this was, in fact, not the first time New Eden had been here.

“Another hour spent deploying drones will mean someone else beats us to the discovery,” one of the directors offered, skirting the deeper point entirely as they opted for pragmatism.

“And it could mean much worse than that,” another director added furtively, throwing some more ambiguous worry into the mix. The room was still fixated on the ring of domes, and the dark, shadowy spires that rose above them; the reminder was somewhat premature.

“Let’s not waste time stirring people up with innuendo, Mr. Darieux.” The softness of a female voice commanded the attention of the room, long before those gathered actually perceived the gross insult she had dared to utter.

The woman who spoke was a Federation Senator – and a Jin-Mei woman at that. This brashness was not her fault. She could only know assertion to be where she stood now, glimpsing something before her superior was even aware. She had long ago recognized that the fastest route to the truth was not dissimilar to the flight path of a bullet, or the trajectory of superheated coronal mass crashing into a planet: an inevitably straight line.

There was no other way to run something as vast as the empire she helped steer, and so she followed up quickly with another lunge for the truth, before anyone could muster their senses to speak.

Board room etiquette could go fuck itself.

“We all know who you intend to throw out there.”

A lasting silence hung about the room as the others lowered their gazes, dreading to watch the exchange.

No matter what happens next, they thought, she’s out of here.

“Do you disagree with this course of action?” The voice from the speaker asked, the stillness and calm in his voice like venom, slowly paralyzing everyone in the room. He was making it her call now – a tactic she never thought to expect.

“No.”

“Very well,” the voice replied. “Someone find Burreau.”

The directors raised their gazes and quickly arranged for the extraction of one of their finest through a few simple gestures and nods. First, all eyes turned toward the two Security Directors, whose bowed heads assured the rest that Burreau’s personal bodyguard had already been contacted and support was inbound. From the way they almost smirked, it meant their people were close enough to presume she was safe. A criss-cross of raised eyebrows thereafter would confirm the temporary closure of key stargate logs, and a “clean” route from her current location to HQ, as well as fleet support from a wing of CreoDron’s finest.

Black Ops fleets had been deployed, Sin Battleships were already undocking and rapidly vanishing in flashes of blue light as they were each deposited along a chain of cynosural fields stretching outward toward Burreau – toward something each crew knew only as the cargo. Local CreoDron patrols relocated to stargates, ready to intercept. Ishkurs and Ishtars deployed drones preemptively in a gesture of threat, drifting at a distance from the passing civilian traffic as their larger brothers circled above, invisible to all.

Before the directors had exhaled for the second time, her passage had been secured and escort arranged. A valuable asset, they understood. Worth the cost of deployment. Perhaps that senator grasped this much as well; it would explain the behavior. Their eyes never quite left her as she stood in the corner, arms folded, failing entirely to understand their secret language of smiles and nods.

Maybe she’s staying after all, they thought, looking among themselves. Maybe the Jin-Mei came without permission.

Maybe it’s personal.

***

“Sir?”

Hilen was still there, staring at the ground where Lianda had stood. For just one moment longer, he would allow his eyes to rest on the soft marks in the grass, tracing over the trail of small footprints she had left for him.

Cold Wind taught him to move without sound or track, and to perceive the paths that are hidden.

It was his job to follow her now.

“That was One I just had here. Did you get a trace on the call?”

“Carirgnottin, sir. She’s not moving either. We have her on infrared at the moment, and she’s still in place.”

“ Two is still missing?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Understood.”

“Sir, permission to speak freely?”

“What is it, Arii?”

“The security detail on her right now is like nothing we’ve seen. The feet on the ground have multiplied by a factor of ten…my whole team is on edge. The timing, sir. Seyllin.”

He hesitated for a long moment, wondering just how much of the last conversation she needed to hear in order to do the job effectively. He only knew it wouldn’t have to be everything. Hilen Tukoss never shared a detail people didn’t need to know.

“With respect, sir, it’s obvious. An entire planet was just destroyed by some cosmic event and the astrophysicist we’ve been tracking for months just disappeared. Vanished. Off the grid completely, without any of us knowing where that second clone went. And now we’re being told that her surveillance status has been bumped to top priority?”

“Let me bring you in then,” he said, turning her own zeal back around. “If you are ready to assume equal responsibility for our new assignment?”

“I’m ready,” she replied without hesitation.

“CreoDron has just discovered a new solar system. They arrived there through an unknown wormhole in Vitrauze. They believe the events in Seyllin created this wormhole, and may have created others. So far, only scout drones have travelled to the other side, but what they have found suggests that this system is home to another civilization. Five images returned only planets, the last shows something else entirely. They found structures, large ones, and I don’t mean on a planet.”

“How advanced are we talking?”

“While scouting what appeared to be some kind of facility out there, one of CreoDron’s drones was shot down. The other five are still positioned at the entrance to the system.”

“Sir, we need to get to Vitrauze.”

He considered for a moment the 82% probability that things were not as they seemed. He couldn’t dismiss it, but he distrusted the numbers. Instinct was telling him that nothing ahead was all that foreign, that they needed diplomats, not scientists.

“No,” he replied, staring down at the information panel overlaid on his wrist. Soon enough, a flood of intel would begin to pour in as a hundred different sources all alerted him to the same event. “Check the news feeds. One is about to hold a briefing live on The Scope.”

“They’re going to announce the findings?” Arii asked, turning her attention toward a nearby screen as she searched for the face of her prey. She could see movement on the infrared – she was sitting upright. Like she’s about to say something important, Arii thought.

“No,” he repeated. “They’re not, and there’s no point chasing them. They’re about to contest the CONCORD travel advisory, and yes, soon after they’ll announce the wormhole. Six press releases later though, and they might start talking about scout drones, maybe release an image or two, but they’re sitting on this. They won’t release that sixth image.”

“Why?”

” So the Vitrauze project can continue undisturbed. Why do you think we lost Two? She’s gone already.”

“If she’s gone already, then why aren’t we going as well?”

” Because someone in the Senate was feeding her intel before CreoDron even arrived. I doubt every senator has been made aware at this point. There’s too many; it would risk a leak.”

“Someone highly placed?”

“Perhaps, but not necessarily. Someone who at least has an overview of security. Someone with pull.”

“So you think the area has been locked down already?”

“I’m not sure, but they only need to know what system to look in, and then we would become very noticeable, very quickly. We’ve stumbled on to something here, and right now, nobody knows it is the only advantage we have.”

“What’s our plan then, sir?”

“First we need to pass this up the chain of command.”

“Understood.”

Somewhere far from Carirgnottin I, in an equally dark and oppressive board room, another group of figures waited impatiently as one of their own excused himself to take a call.

***

“Have you lost control of your asset, Hilen? Do you even know where she is?”

Hilen felt his wrist grow warm. Looking down at the information overlay once more, he could see the first trickles that would soon become the flood. A hundred of his best people all turning in the wrong direction.

“We know where One is. If you’re near a holovid screen–”

The man raised his view to one of the panels filling the lobby outside the board room. Just below a large platinum-thorium etching that read “ZAINOU BIOTECH – BOARD OF DIRECTORS,” there was the pale, innocent face of the Jin-Mei he’d ordered his corporation’s best surveillance to watch. The voices back inside grew louder for a moment before being quickly overcome by the growing sound of her own voice. They were all watching now.

“I see her. What is going on?”

“They’re escalating her profile. It’s a distraction, sir, and I need everyone there to ignore it. We have a situation unfolding in the background.”

“I’m listening.”

“Before I explain, I need you to get in touch with Ishukone. Find someone as high up the ranks as we can get quickly and unofficially. We’re going to need them for this.”

Hilen waited for an answer.

“I see,” the director finally offered. “Tell me, Hilen?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is it their previous experience that you’re after?”

And suddenly Hilen realized that he knew. He knew something, at least. Enough to ask the question, and ask it in such an indirect way. There was no telling what was infiltrated now. No line was secure.

“Yes, sir.” Hilen felt a dull ache in the depth of his stomach, the pain of the one soldier who returned back to base alive, having seen the onslaught to come.

Except this time, nobody had fired a shot, and nobody would.

***

What do you intend, ambassador?

I propose we call for a private summit of national leaders, to discuss an exchange of information and come to an agreement about the best use for select recovered parts. We could use the Inner Assembly to arrange for the meetings quite easily under the guise of an understandable concern for these events, which have touched our worlds too, as we will inform them.

The evidence?

It will be systematically accumulated and re-integrated into current technology in ways that render the salient points unrecognizable. The finer details will have to evolve organically, but the framework will be a new, non-binding agreement regarding scientific commodity trading. Although the primary motivator will be the acquisition and development of new technologies, there are also factors such as quarantine periods, comprehensive safety testing, and many other additional barriers to access the empires can and will likely impose without suggestion. The various research benefits inherent to each unit guarantees widespread financial self-interest. Our engineers have already produced a range of schematics. Some of them are new technologies, but we believe the concession here is a smaller one in the long term. Where we could, we focused on improvements upon pre-existing methods.

How do you suppose this will even work to suppress the information?

You must understand two things. The first is human sensitivity. Seyllin is dominating the media, and as such, it is dominating the public consciousness. This works to our advantage, but only for so long. The world’s attention is turned toward the disaster, so now is the most opportune moment to make bold moves elsewhere. None of them want to be the first to speak about the potential profits, the new resources, the opportunities and secrets that can be uncovered. At this moment, those avenues will be forced into the background, and yet undoubtedly pursued all the same. If the empires are already operating on a covert footing, then we need not lead them there.

You seem confident in this plan.

I simply believe it will be an easy law to pass in this moment. The non-binding nature will appear in line with the current lack of information. A symbolic gesture made in the spirit of peace and cooperation, made quietly and where few look, a means for all parties to ensure a more secure future.

The capsuleers?

Naturally, there will need to be a waiver on capsuleer-related science and industry, but this is the second thing you must understand. The truth will find its way out eventually. Please forgive me for saying so, but I cannot properly serve in this role if I do not give you the most accurate analyses I can. The truth will find its way out. We cannot control their access. It will be they who make the discovery.

How quickly do you expect this to happen?

I cannot say. Their interests are unpredictable, but they are divided and divisive. There will always be ones who question what most do not, but I believe that overall, they will share the same goals as the empires. They will take what they can understand and reintegrate. We may see another rise in their power and autonomy as a result. We should expect them to monopolize on this new opportunity as well. Given the inherent dangers of exploring Anoikis, they are positioned favorably to do so. In terms of raw resource gathering capabilities, conventional empire fleets will not be economically competitive. We will struggle to maintain a presence eventually.

That will turn the empires toward research.

Not if we intervene and provide for them what convincingly appears to be the most promising final applications of any potential studies. This hints at precisely the point we must illuminate. When framed as a concern for the balance of power between the empires and the capsuleers, our interests will appear far more congruent with theirs, and our actions will remain understandable. The empires can be made to quickly appreciate how little control over these new areas they will have, and from there, it will be simple to assist each of them in coordinating access to components we identify as key. They will recognize it as the only opportunity any of them have for strategic equality. None will refuse.

Our research?

>Had she not realized yet? In the early months, we can make a great deal of ground.

Early months?

She had not. The ambassador swallowed. Emotion was rippling inside each cell, bursting throughout the bloodstream as it tried to break free.

The capsuleers. They will settle. They will understand the network eventually, and they will command it.

They will not be everywhere at once, and we can move undetected.

In this environment, so can they. We are all headed to the same destinations. We have no desire to be noticed, and no hope in conflict with them.

Then we will use these early months well.

She recovered quickly from that thought, he mused. Yes.

If the situation is ever understood in its entirety, as you predict, then there will be consequences for these actions.

I do not share that view. What we do now benefits all parties. If our motives are ultimately viewed as benign, then any perceived wrongdoings can be explained in full detail as they are identified. Trust and clarification at the highest tiers will filter downward and provide the level of institutional compliance necessary to establish the agreement.

You must still realize that we cannot become publicly involved in this?

Yes, this is obvious to me. The suggestion will be put forward earlier, between myself and the other ambassadors, or the national leadership, if you please.

The former.

The ambassador cleared his throat. “I understand. Was there anything else you required of me?”

“Did you hear of Burreau?”

“Briefly.”

“What is your assessment?”

“I believe she is dead.”

“You are correct. There was activity on the line. She was at one of the mirrors.”

The ambassador almost seemed to smile for a moment. “She learned well.”

“She was taught by the best. We are concerned about the reasons why she was chosen. ”

“Perhaps you should be, but then there are not many astrophysicists with clones.”

“Let us hope it is that simple.”

“I would not hope. I would investigate.”

“Thank you, ambassador. That is all.”

***

Vitrauze Agreement.

Article 8, Section E

CONCORD subsidization in the acquisition of scientifically valuable by-products.

Although preliminary, through the spirit of peace and co-operation that affirms this treaty, each of the four member nations have exchanged sufficient information to identify four key salvageable materials of scientific interest. Seeking to both minimize their impact on capsuleer economic development and to allow more time for proper investigation into the impact of all unknown materials, the member nations have agreed to focus on four lower tier by-products identified during initial excavations of unknown space.

Clause 1) The four member nations of the treaty have each agreed that the preliminary findings, and any agreements based thereupon, on each of the four units is strictly provisional. Current scientific opinion broadly agrees that these items are of little material value. However, any reassessment undertaken by any of the member nations that is deemed to invalidate this initial finding may be deferred to.

Clause 2) CONCORD, in operation with the SCC, has agreed to facilitate and subsidize the acquisition of these items through capsuleer markets at a standard price agreed upon by all of the four member nations.

***

October acquisition metrics (Capsuleer Markets / SCC):

Data Library: 11,799,985

Neural Network Analyzer: 1,162,057

Coordinates Database: 244,234

Drone AI Nexus: 70,726

Valklears

“I am not going to train you; I am going to try to kill you.”
- Valklear Instructor

During the long years of enslavement and the great war for liberation, the Minmatar tribes found themselves sorely lacking in able-bodied solders. They were forced to create them from their most dangerous criminals – murderers, rapists, thugs, etc. The program was a remarkable success. The Valklears won the Minmatar a slew of military victories and emerged as the Rebellion’s most notorious elite force.

With the end of the Rebellion and the formation of the Minmatar Republic, some politicians within the new government questioned the need for such an iniquitous military force: The need was gone, peace was won and surely such ugly necessities of the past should be resigned to history to make way for the new Minmatar age? The military commanders would have none of it, and the Valklear program remained and continues to prosper to this day, although it has lost none of its infamous reputation.

Valklear commanders rely wholly on specialized recruiters to fill their ranks. They tour the courtrooms and judgement halls of the tribes, and with a trained eye they pick out the prime cuts of criminality from the great swathe of vicious, vile, and corrupt. Once the recruiter has selected a candidate, he works on brining the convict into the system. Each recruiter has his own persuasive technique, but for many hard convicts, presented with the option of a lifetime behind bars or a shorter term in the military, the choice is a rather obvious one.

The recruiter’s selection is not as clear-cut as one may think, though. They recruit from a broad range of the criminal fraternity. One day, a violent psychopath may be paid a visit, the next a serial killer, and then perhaps a corrupt lawyer, a notorious embezzler – even people who may have never held a weapon in their lives. The path the criminal has taken matters less than their skills, instincts and the inherent potential the recruiter perceives.

Once a candidate has accepted the proposition, they are silently removed from their cells and the penal system loses them in a maze of red tape and paperwork. Any digging within their records will show that these prisoners took their place in the death chamber or got transferred to a maximum-security facility. The Valklear candidates are lost in the system and will never be found.

When the candidate is removed from their prison cells, the training begins in earnest. Hundreds of evil-minded bastards, bloody killers, and fiercely intelligent criminals are put through one of the most gruelling training regimes known in New Eden. Through intense training, the prospective Valklears are melded into unstoppable war machines. Instructors push recruits beyond their limits in order to see if they push back. The candidates are beaten to see if they will get up again, then beaten down even harder. Recruiters want that indomitable glint in their eye that says, “Fuck you.”

Those candidates that wash out are thrown back in the penal system with even harsher sentences. The ones that make the grade – and to the recruiter’s credit, it is a surprisingly high percentage – are then indoctrinated into the Valklears proper, where the expectation of “tough bastard” gets re-evaluated once more.

A Valklear’s tour of duty is dependent upon the term of his original sentence, not including the full year of training after selection from prison. If a Valklear survives his tour, he immediately becomes a free man. He is also given a new identity, and any links to his criminal past are wiped from the records and replaced with a suitable cover.

After their tour with this elite force, most Valklears find a calling suited to them in other military branches. The former Valklear will in turn get transferred to another unit, though his new comrades will remain ignorant of his background.

Currently, some of the highest-ranking members of the Minmatar armed service were once Valklears. This fact is kept top secret; the public remaining ignorant of a Minmatar military run by murderers and thieves.

Extinction Burst

The type of behavior that presents the greatest potential for scientific study, I find, is that which is exhibited under duress. Not enough research has been undertaken in this area, and those who engage in it do so under a dark cloud of superstition and mistrust, suffering a woeful lack of support from the public. We have to do it all ourselves – all of it – hidden away like criminals.

Against completely nonsensical prejudices, I should add, held by a species composed almost solely of unexamined habits and chiseled thoughts, a species whose worldview has been set since childhood, with room for nothing new or exciting, and to whom the suggestion that there might be something worthwhile to be found on the edges is so repulsive as to be anathema to the trembling cores of their very moral fiber.

Take the extinction burst, for example.

While most people – including a few scientists, even – believe that certain behavioral patterns cannot be forcibly deteriorated, I am of the opinion that we simply have not developed the correct methodology. Everything can eventually be exposed; expulsed; exterminated. But lifelong habits run deep, and the development of an all-encompassing methodological framework that can demonstrably break even the most stringent of these remains, unfortunately, beyond my abilities. I’m still fencing with the problem; working on the edges, trying to find a way in.

An extinction burst is not the extinction of a species, though that would be a marvel to engineer. It has to do with the more granular exhibition of learned behavior, when that behavior is met by adverse conditions never before experienced, and with the reactions subsequently exhibited by the afflicted organism. In most cases these new conditions progressively alter and eliminate that behavioral pattern, but you’d be amazed at how desperately some animals will maintain their old habits before finally letting them die off for good.

This is, quite honestly, a good thing for evolution. I have no time for a species that gives up the first time it encounters failure, or pain, or lack of reward.

Some species do give up right away. But others will persist, following through on the same pattern even when it is not being rewarded, or even, I should say, when the situation might demand that they break the habit. They may no longer be safe. There may be a dearth of food, or water, or air. They may be running out of time. But still they’ll cling on to what might be called, for the lack of a better term, hope. Moreover, their attempts will intensify, the number of attempts rapidly increasing for a short period of time in a last-gasp attempt to maintain the pattern. That is the extinction burst.

We see this occur in various guises throughout the animal kingdom, but it has not been extensively studied. This lack of research surprised me when I first began looking into the phenomenon; I did not expect my experiments to be groundbreaking merely by dint of being the first ones performed in a proper, thorough, scientific manner. Naturally, I’ve tried to cast a wide net, acquiring a set of vastly unlike species in New Eden and, under controlled conditions, carefully noting their reactions to my stimuli.

Most learned patterns have to do with confinement, but I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the usual button-stimulus paradigm. All it really does is produce a lot of needy, overweight rodents.

Instead – and believe me, this took a bit of time – I’ve set up a kind of working, monitored environment. Not just a cage with a bed and a feeder, but an actual maze of sorts. It’s complete with all manner of stimulus-providing machinery, most of which remains hidden until the animal makes its way down that particular corridor or into that particular room. The function of the stimulus machinery is basic and easily understood by whatever animal I’ve got in the maze – often no more than the familiar button or sensory panel dispensing a quick drink of water or a brief encouragement of some gland or another. It does not constitute the main experiment, but it’s extremely handy for taking more detailed measurements of the subjects’ current extinction burst status.

The main experiment is the maze itself. Most of the corridors and rooms have exits, but they are hidden and will reveal themselves only after a specific sequence of events has been enacted. Again, these events are not too complex for most of the animals in the maze, though I will admit that I was rather disappointed initially by the Hanging Long-Limbs, – but they do require the subject to experiment rigorously with materials at hand.

The maze starts off easy but gets progressively more difficult. Along the way, as noted, stimulus-providing machinery permits me to monitor the subjects’ extinction progress. Some tend to give up quite a bit sooner than others, and every time they stop to push a button in a room, you can see the hopelessness in their increasingly lackluster reactions to the stimuli.

The Hanging Long-Limbs, of course, remain the exception.

When animals come to in my maze – I’ll admit I have to sedate them for transport and preparation, but it wears off without any noticeable effect – they tend to pace about a bit, get familiar with their surroundings, and altogether look a little confused but inquisitive. Not quite so for the Hanging Long-Limb. I don’t quite know what causes this.

The species has quite a limited spread, confined as it is to the methane clouds of a single Gallente planet. It grew up in an environment that has remained unchanged for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, almost entirely unspoiled by man. It has its predators, as everything does, but it knows how to deal with them, and nothing in my maze sets off any of its ingrained warning signals. The Hanging Long-Limb is also not, I have to say, a very intelligent species. This is not necessarily a drawback: Low intelligence often means highly developed instincts and makes an animal’s responses easier to predict, categorize and quantify. Lastly, it does not rush into anything. It is a fast animal when it wants to be, as various small amphibians have learned to their brief regret, but unless driven by the impetus of moveable prey or by a nearby predator, it simply is not in any great rush at all.

I had not considered this when I acquired these animals for my maze. They were costly – I had to flood the damn maze with methane, too – but they are worth it. While other species all follow more or less the same behavioral patterns, the Hanging Long-Limb continues to defy my expectations. It moves slowly, dazedly, as if drugged, and it seems to take an endless fascination in studying its surroundings. Many of them never even make it out of the first room. Watching their progress, once the observer has cultivated the necessary patience, is so lulling as to be practically meditative.

The same cannot be said for another of my favorite subjects, the animal known to its local population as a Charisoco. It is a small rodent, nimble but extremely strong for its size, and restlessly inventive. It is invariably curious when it begins to explore the maze, shuffling around the corridors with apparent aimlessness, but even then, my observations have proven that it develops – visually develops –- its escape methods by making its way through the twisty corridors with remarkable alacrity. The first half of the maze provides little to no obstacle to this ingenious little animal, which makes its tendencies to halt its progress and experiment with the side-track stimuli I’ve left in various rooms all the more amusing to monitor.

Meanwhile, the great beast they call the Slaver – easily one of the most dangerous animals I’ve put in the maze, and certainly one that made me nervous to the point of queasiness when I first watched it wander the corridors – has a more forthright approach. It is cunning, as predators are, but if it gets too frustrated it will eventually begin throwing itself against the walls, heedlessly ramming its bulk against them in a futile but impressive display of strength that rattles the room. The Slaver is a harsh and brutal animal that simply does not ever give up, though whether its tenacity is out of survival instinct or a kind of angry desperation, I don’t yet know.

None of which helps prove the extinction burst, as these animals make their way through my labyrinthine passages. At least, it remains unproven until they get to a random room – I don’t even know which one; my maze autoselects it – where no solution will work. None. The exit strategy, which becomes obvious after a little while, does not function. No matter which panels, buttons, floor plates, or decorative items are touched, in whatever order, nothing happens.

The real, proper exit strategy…well, that’s when some of the animals start to get a little nervous.

I’ve run this experiment countless times. I truly feel I am on the cusp of great discoveries here. But moreover, I simply enjoy watching these animals, my favorite subjects. I don’t feel I’ll ever tire of them, though I do fear that some day I will inevitably grow weary of the experiments themselves, and I’ll have to put an end to it all. Yes, even the Hanging-Long Limb, reposed in blissful quiet; or the creative little Charisoco; or the restless, pacing Slaver.

And maybe even you, my darling, as I watch you screaming at the walls.

Ante

When she suddenly stopped walking at the base of the dropship’s gangplank, Silphy enDiabel’s entourage halted abruptly and turned to see if something was wrong. They waited patiently on the tarmac under the blazing Intaki sun for several moments as she stood absolutely motionless, staring at the ground.

“nMiss enDiabel?” The only decorated Space Police officer in the bunch stepped forward, reaching out for her arm.

She waved dismissively at him and knelt slowly, pulling her long braid of synthetic blond hair behind her shoulder as sheran her hand across the concrete landing platform, tilting her head to examine her palm when it came back covered in a thin layer of dust and small pebbles. Smiling, she stood up and rubbed her hands together, nodding for the entourage to continue on their way to the cathedral’s spaceport terminal a short distance away. Despite the glaring sunlight reflecting off the glass paneled surface, she could see several figures anticipating her arrival near the main entrance.

As she led the group to the terminal, the last two armed escorts established positions near the ship, one of them leaning in closer to the other and whispering, “What was that all about?”

Not taking his gaze off of his responsibility, he whispered back, “It’s been a while for her.”

* * *

Making his way through the murmuring crowd of worshipers as delicately as possible, the courier approached the hooded woman from behind and coughed subtly, standing with his gaze averted. When she casually turned around to meet his gaze, he seemed on the verge of choking, but managed to stutter, “I have a message for you from Internal Security, Reverend Mother.”

“Go on,” she breathed, downplaying the conversation so as not to attract the attention of anyone else in the chamber, a sprawling temple just as impressive for its size and grandeur as it was for the haste in which it was constructed. Despite the fact that her official title was Chief Executive Officer, she had to admit to herself that she secretly enjoyed being called Reverend Mother by the frightful, superstitious locals on many of the worlds her organization aided.

All the Sisters of EVE ever asked for in return for their humanitarian assistance was permission to construct cathedrals dedicated to their faith, and over the years they had perfected the science and art of completing such structures in a matter of mere hours. The one in which they stood had a ceiling over thirty meters high and could seat twenty-thousand worshipers during its daily services, one of which had just ended.

“A ship has arrived,” he began, glancing in each direction to make sure no one else was within earshot before continuing. “A Syndicate ship.”

The woman pulled the hood back over her shoulders, revealing a tight bun of thick brown hair held in place with an ornate ivory clip. She folded her hands into the sleeves of her robe before chiding the messenger. “I believe this is a matter the local authorities can handle, my child. The Syndicate knows their place, so if they…”

Interrupting her and immediately regretting it, the boy clenched his eyes shut, expecting to be harshly reprimanded, but spoke his peace anyway. “Not they, Reverend Mother: her.”

“Her?” She inhaled as if to say something else, then stopped abruptly and looked around the room. When she finally did finish her thought, she spoke a little too loudly, prompting more than a few bystanders to take notice. “Silphy is here?”

“Yes, Reverend Mother. She waits for you in the rectory.” Instantly understanding that he had overstayed his welcome, the messenger bowed his head respectfully and dashed off through the crowd of dispersing worshipers.

Santimona Sarpati met the lingering stares of several onlookers before replacing her hood and gliding off toward the arched corridor.

* * *

Silphy was standing with her back to the door when Santimona entered the meeting room, an oddly shaped octagonal chamber with smooth metal walls that curved inward near the ceiling to create a geometric pattern of etched reliefs. Directly opposite the door was a wide, double-paned window looking out on Intaki V’s capital city, Lenoika, its flat-roofed buildings boiling in the red afternoon sun. She didn’t move at all in response to the Reverend Mother’s arrival.

“I was told there would be rain today or tomorrow,” she said to the window.

Santimona loosened the silk rope that kept her formal robe closed and moved to a seat at the low, square table in the very center of the room, which had but two chairs. When she was certain that the elegant garment had fallen properly over her crossed legs and was free of any wrinkles, she replied, “We’ve found meteorological reports rather inaccurate on this planet, considering the late sequence of this system’s star.” Conjuring up a hollow smile, she offered, “Stay a few days and you’ll see rain, I promise. You’ll have to find accommodations in the city, though; only Sisters are allocated living quarters on the premises. You understand.”

Silphy didn’t take the bait, just stared out the window. “Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Miss Sarpati.”

“I’m not quite certain why you wished to speak to me, actually.” Resting one of her pale arms on the table, she drummed her fingers. “Is your station experiencing another food shortage?”

Silphy turned at last to look her in the eye, but still refrained from reacting to Santimona’s repeated jabs at their tumultuous history. Instead, she copied her smile and played along. “No, but you have the Syndicate’s continued thanks for the Sisters’ assistance in that matter.”

Santimona nodded appreciatively, but only for appearance’s sake. She continued counting quietly to herself. Twenty-eight, twenty-seven, twenty-six…

“How are your efforts proceeding here on Intaki V?” Silphy reached the table in three steps, but didn’t sit, instead leaning on it just enough for her shadow to pass over the other woman. “Will you be here much longer?”

“As I’m sure you remember,” Santimona replied, “the cathedral is always our last item of business for any project.” She motioned for her guest to take a seat, but Silphy straightened back up instead. “I’m sorry,” Santimona amended, “but I’m not exactly certain what your title is these days. How should I address you?”

“Syndicate titles are purely for internal use, so you needn’t worry about them. I have, however, returned to using my family name.” Silphy paused for a few moments, looking at Santimona inquisitively. “Do you know what enDiabel translates to, roughly, in the original Intaki dialect?” As she spoke, Silphy strolled around the conference table with the practiced ease of a seasoned politician circling her audience.

Knowing that she wasn’t really expected to answer the rhetorical question, Santimona simply raised her eyebrows and waited for Silphy to continue her train of thought.

“Good,” she said with a smirk. “How much longer?”

Two, one “Now.” Santimona lunged forward on the table as Silphy hurriedly took the opposite seat and closed in as well. When next she spoke, the Sister had an urgent, hushed tone. “It was a little more difficult to time the punctuated recordings in this facility since it’s so new. When the sensors realign during this log, everything between now and the point when it resumes will look like a momentary glitch, which the operator will probably chalk up to sunspot activity. We might only have a few minutes.

“That’s all we’ll need if everything is in place. If that crusty old merc refuses to talk to me directly, you need to convince him that including us is going to be much easier than locking us out.” Silphy slammed her hand down on the table to conclude the statement. Her eyes shimmered in the crimson-tinted light that streamed into the room.

“And if he refuses?” All traces of ire had evaporated from Santimona’s voice.

Silphy turned her head and clenched her jaw tightly before answering. “Tell that traitorous son of a bitch that the Syndicate isn’t going to sit idly by as another government ignores us. And if Mens thinks those pedantic mercenaries are going to hinder our business one bit, he is sorely mistaken.” Leaning forward and composing herself, she spoke calmly, “What I mean is that we have something to offer both entities if we’re brought in on the deal.” During her brief, emotional response, a lock of hair had escaped the lengthy braid running down her back.

Reaching out across the table, Santimona gently pushed the loose hairs back behind Silphy’s ear and smiled. “Yes, that’s more like it. Flies with honey, my dear.”

Silphy almost reached up towards her hand, but stopped herself short. “What do you think he’ll say, Mona?”

“That depends,” she said, her attention seemingly elsewhere for a few seconds, then reasserted herself suddenly, “on what you’re offering him. Remember that you have two flanks to address, and in my experience, Muryia can be very difficult.”

Silphy leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms, taking the time to choose her next words carefully. “Tell him that the Federation hasn’t controlled trade in this system for decades, and that if he wants that blood money from Mens to keep appearing in his bank account, he’ll learn to respect the local culture.”

“Ahh, now that’s going to be the hard sell. He’s not at all happy about your little stunt with the Zephyr shuttles. Everyone who produces shuttles took a noticeable hit when you did that. If you offer the right commodity, I’m sure he’ll reciprocate.”

Covering her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle her laughter, Silphy nonetheless refused to look away. When she was able to control her mirth again, she explained, “I think I have just the thing his corporation would appreciate. There’s a funny story behind those shuttles, by the way, but I don’t think we have time for it.”

“You’re right,” Santimona replied abruptly, standing up and pulling her robe tightly about her. Twelve, eleven, ten…

Mirroring her posture as she stood from her seat, Silphy leaned forward onto the table once again and shot her counterpart a seductive grin. After a few seconds of silence, she asked, “Do you ever miss it?”

“Every day,” Santimona replied with a nostalgic sigh. Three, two, one…

Reaching back and putting her shoulder into the effort, Santimona whirled around suddenly, lashing out with one open palm to strike Silphy across the face. The impact’s sharp crack echoed around the room as Silphy tumbled backward over her chair, landing on the floor in a disheveled heap.

Shrieking at the top of her lungs, Santimona stormed around the table, pointing accusingly at her prone target. “Does your arrogance have no bounds?” When Silphy had recovered enough to sit up and wipe the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth, the Sister continued, “I won’t jeopardize this honorable organization to subsidize your criminal agenda!”

“You’re pathetic,” Silphy finally uttered, pulling herself up and immediately assuming a defensive position. Beyond the doors, she could hear her security escort arguing with the Sisters of EVE guards stationed there. “I can see right through you, Sister. You’re insane if you don’t think the Intaki are going to figure out why you’re really here. This was your last chance to get through this with any semblance of your obsolete cult intact.”

As the doors burst open and half a dozen armed men encircled each woman, Santimona shrugged off her protectors and released a parting shot. “I should have known you’d never change, Silphy. Get off this planet.”

Glaring at the Reverend Mother spitefully, Silphy shook her head and stalked out of the room, her escorts hustling to keep up with her determined pace. They marched through the cathedral without stopping until they reached the gangplank of the dropship, which was casting an elongated shadow over the landing pad, its metal hull sizzling under the unrelenting sun. Silphy turned to face the ornate building, her eyes following the swooping architecture up to the steeple near the top, which was emblazoned with the Sisters of EVE holy crest. “Sadistic witch,” she spat.

Not far away, in the cathedral’s security chief’s office, Santimona watched Silphy intently on the holographic display. With her sentries still nearby and the chief respectfully out of the way so the older woman could use his station, she studied Silphy’s every move, frowning as the Syndicate’s unofficial leader spit on the ground in contempt before boarding her ship. “I often wonder which is more perplexing: the fact that she abandoned the Sisterhood or that she was ever allowed to join in the first place.”

* * *

Reclining in her personal quarters aboard the starship, Silphy took a sip from a glass of ice water and held it to her cheek, wincing reflexively. Chuckling to herself, she tapped her password into the console embedded in herchair’s armrest, prompting a translucent heads-up display to appear in the air half a meter in front of her. Scrolling through several waiting messages, she chose one of the more recent ones and read it quickly.

Silphy tapped the controls that would establish a direct connection to the person who had sent the message. She waited patiently until her screen evaporated, replaced with the three dimensional head of an older man covered in elaborate facial tattoos. “Silphy,” he said respectfully.

“Mr. Lecante,” she answered, nodding slowly. “Have the other families reached a consensus?”

“Yes.” He looked around as though there were other people in the room with him, but none were visible on the holographic display. “They’ve agreed to your plan. So what’s our next move?”

“Consolidate all the data received from the Zephyr program, everything those oblivious capsuleers have given us on wormhole space. Prepare the datacores for immediate transport; a representative from the Sisters of EVE will be arriving shortly to take possession.”

Lecante nodded. “I think you’ve really nailed this one, Silphy. That’s precisely the kind of token Ishukone won’t be able to resist.”

“I know,” she concluded, touching the disconnect button and raising the glass to her cheek again. She spent the remainder of the journey back to Syndicate space staring out the window of her cabin, unable to conceal her nostalgic smile.

Chasing Shadows

Directors Conference Room, Federal Intelligence Office HQ, Renyn system, Essence

March 9th, YC112

“So why are we here, exactly?” asked Candon.

“Haven’t found out yet,” replied Suisse. “All I know is it’s Code 14, top clearance.” He enunciated the next part with careful mocking precision. “Should see En-Quaitant-do-Miérz Portres in here soon enough.” He snapped his finger. “Yup, there he is. Start smiling.”

Portres was making his way toward them. He was a tall gentleman, about fifty years old, and he walked with a purposeful strut that came off just a tad too calculated. With a cultured flourish, he took his seat next to the other two.

“Gentlemen.”

“Counsel. How are the kids?” asked Suisse.

“Oh, you know,” replied Portres. “Annoying their parents, going against the grain, experimenting with trodes and bodymods and what-have-you. It’ll pass.” He placed his case on the table in front of him and unclasped it.

“Any idea why we’re here?” asked Candon.

“Something about a new security directive. I’m not sure,” replied Portres.

“You’d think they’d brief us properly,” said Suisse.

Portres nodded. “Yes,” he said, “I suppose it was all rather vague and hurried.” He pried his d-pad from the case’s foam inlay, placed it on the table in front of him and began powering it up. “Comfortably certain it’s all part of a plan, though,” he said, unbuttoning his jacket. “Let it seldom be said our new President doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“Let it never be thought, much less said,” muttered Candon.

Portres straightened in his chair, smoothed his lapel bottoms. “Well,” he said, “at the very least he provides the illusion of knowing what he’s doing. Right now, maybe that’s what we all need. I know he’s convinced me so far, and I’m a fairly hard man to convince.”

“That much is true,” said Candon. They sat there in silence for a few seconds while the meeting table’s holographic center cycled through its test patterns.

About ten minutes later, with the formalities concluded and the heads of the Federal Intelligence Office’s fifteen major divisions settling somewhat uneasily into their seats, the slight, bald figure at the head of the table began to speak.

“I’m sure most of you gentlemen are wondering why you were brought here this afternoon on such short notice, and with such dramatic urgency,” he began. “Just as I’m sure many of you realize that the act of bringing you here in such a way can be an end unto itself.”

A few heads turned around the table, but barely a sound was heard.

“As of 9:00 AM this morning, I have issued a presidential directive that places specific orders in the hands of each and every one of you. Your dossier pads have been updated with the relevant information. Use the holofield to your convenience. As you review the data, bear in mind that if even one bit of this information finds its way into the wrong hands, the whole operation will come down on your head.”

He paused for one second, then continued. “As you will learn, the impromptu Code 14 meetings will continue for the next two weeks. They are an unfortunate necessity, but crucial in the grander scheme.” He lowered his head. The room was silent.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Please take your time to review your orders. They are effective immediately.” Without another word, he turned, strode away from the table, and vanished through a side entrance, the subdued slither of his entourage trailing behind him.

Candon and Suisse looked at each other. Portres stared down at his d-pad stream. One by one, the three men went to work.

***

State and Region Bank Gala Hall, Jita system, The Forge

March 20th, YC112

The hall was gigantic, tastefully adorned in traditional Caldari style and dotted with artistic recreations of State exploits commissioned by the State’s most beloved artists. The exclusive crowd in attendance, however, were far more interested in the other people around them than in their exorbitant surroundings.

“Miss Omura.”

“Mister Kaikumi. Good to see you made it.”

“How have things been, Miss Omura?”

“Copasetic. And with you?”

“Staying on an even keel.”

“Good to hear. I understand you’ve been expanding into new markets recently?”

“Always on the prowl. Expansion is the lifeblood of our economy.” He made a sudden awkward shuffle, backed up two steps. “My apologies. Miss Omura, allow me to introduce a friend of mine. This is Katiana Rigomi. She’s an Achura investor of some repute. Katiana, this is Jaan Omura, the CEO of Caldari Funds Unlimited.”

The girl thrust out her hand, almost forcefully. The older woman took her hand and shook it, and as she did, the girl’s expression turned strong and penetrating, full of purpose. Her hand was cold.

Elsewhere in the room, a camera snapped.

***

Mercantile Club Master Parlor, New Caldari system, The Forge

March 29th, YC112

Dim lights glowed in far corners, draping tasteful ambience over the plush chamber. Against the city’s jagged skyline, two older men were engaged in heated conversation.

“I don’t know, Sioras. Advisors to the Federation? It sounds a bit pie-in-the-sky to me. You don’t think his motives might be spurious in the least?”

“No no, listen to me,” said Sioras. “I’m just saying that if there’s anything for us to be gained from the hoopla going on right now with Omura and CFU, then it would be with him.”

“But we’d essentially be turncoats.”

A note of impatience crept into Sioras’s voice. “Think outside the box, Kanai. You and I have been doing this for decades. Our best days are behind us. We’re basically just glorified financial advisors at this point. Sure, we’ll work high level, but we won’t be aiding the enemy. We’ll just be economists, there to help bridge the rift between the two nations.”

Kanai said nothing. He looked out at the city, watched the skylarks ascend into orbit, lingered briefly on the erratic blinking lights of the skyscrapers in the fading dusk.

“Think about it,” said Sioras. “The political capital would be enormous. I mean, we could get back in the game. The Provists have enough internal trouble right now, anyway. They’re not going to come hunting for us, least of all with the visibility we’ll have. And besides, we’re advisors. It’s not like we’ll be directly involved in affairs of the state.”

“State,” grunted Kanai.

Sioras gave a small sigh, clasped his hands together. “Yeah. Look, I know where you’re coming from. Don’t think I don’t. But consider it, at least. Give it a fighting chance. Didn’t the Sustainability and Co-operation Conference do anything to soften your view on this?”

“Tell you the truth,” replied Kanai, “I was smelling deception right from the start of that little get-together. The pandering was so obvious. The cultural nods were revolting. You could tell they thought they were being subtle, too.”

Sioras nodded. “Well,” he said, “our former compatriots have seldom been renowned for their nuance. Whatever the case may be in that regard, the facts of the situation speak for themselves, don’t they?”

“I don’t know,” said Kanai. “I see the opportunity, and it seems good. Even if there was blowback from the die-hards, we could probably weather it with PR. It’s just…I just don’t trust that little man. He’s unreadable. You never know where you have him. Any minute now, I feel like he’s going to tap me on the shoulder and politely inform me he’s the actual father of my children.”

Sioras fixed him with an exasperated look, the kind only an old friend can bestow. “I’m going,” he said presently, with a note of resigned finality. “So are Kormoken and Tikilo, along with a good deal of the Citadel old guard. Are you sure you don’t want to give it a little more consideration?”

Kanai was silent.

“Well,” said Sioras. “You think about it.”

***

Caldari Providence Directorate Headquarters, Piak system, Lonetrek

April 2nd, YC112

“It’s all over the wires, sir. The financial establishment is up in arms.”

In the warm interior of his personal quarters, Executor Tibus Heth, the highest-ranking man in the Caldari State, sat in a posture of frozen rigidity.

“What’s the extent of the damage, counsel?” he asked.

“Well, sir… for one thing, right now Omura’s got more on her plate than she can handle. Even if her name clears eventually, every one of her close associates will have distanced themselves too far by then to come back. And it’s making people point fingers elsewhere. High-visibility employees are gone from two of the eight megas already. Federation media’s playing it to the hilt, too. No punches pulled.”

“What are the repercussions for the CFU pension funds?” asked Heth, shifting slightly in his seat.

“Well, sir,” said the counsel, and paused. As if on cue, the holographic field bearing his image wavered slightly. “Net asset values are going to stay more or less intact, but if the current situation escalates any further the investors will most likely pull their money for political reasons. If enough of them do that, we’re going to have a problem on our hands that I’m just not sure how we’re going to deal with.”

“And the rest of the megas?”

“Lai Dai and Kaalakiota are currently engaged in strenuous internal and external PR efforts, trying to make sure no one outside the very top tiers of command realizes they could stand a real chance of crumbling at the seams due to infighting. Like I said, they’re really up in arms, sir.”

For a moment Heth sat, staring down at his lap and rubbing his calloused thumbs together. He stayed that way for a while, with his counterpart on the other side of the FTL link growing increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, the executor raised his gaze, face resolved, fingers locked in front of him.

“Set up an inquiry. National scale and beyond. I want all figureheads closely monitored twenty-four hours a day. I want every single transaction routed through our headquarters for analysis. I want nothing to get by us. Nothing, do you understand me? We’re going to clamp down on this thing hard, and we’re going to start right now. I trust you know who to talk to for the wheels to be set in motion.”

There was a small pause at the other end. “Executor,” the voice came then, “your wish is my command.”

***

“Mister President?”

“Yes.”

“We just received word. Heth ordered a national inquiry. They’re starting with the financial institutions. No stone unturned. Being very vocal about it, too.”

“Thank you.”

“Just thought you’d want to know.” The secretary allowed himself a brief grin.

Jacus Roden flipped off his viewscreen, drew in a deep breath, released it. He leaned back in his seat, thought about the events of days past, and tried not to smile himself.

Merely Disassembled

Parlan, reading scripture, felt a drop of sweat trickle down his back. It was a late day in early summer and the fields outside still wavered with heat. Through the window he could see the workers putting away their microblade scythes and sending the last of the wheat through the binders. People worked in shifts here on the colony, and it was Parlan’s week for early days in the field and late nights studying his faith.

He wouldn’t have minded being out there, working himself into tiredness. It was far preferable to thinking so much, these days.

He refocused on the text in front of him, willing his gaze to remain fixed on it. Ordinarily, reading the scripture was akin to meditation. The words would hum in his head, turning into a litany that took him elsewhere; sometimes into the gentle rapture of faith, and sometimes merely into a void empty of all sense, away from whatever earthly demands needed to be ignored.

The drop of sweat kept trickling down, down, down.

A sound emanating from somewhere in the room interrupted his attempts at meditation, and he realized he had been quietly singing to himself. He sighed, closed the text and got up, sliding his wooden old chair under his wooden old desk, and massaging the sweat on his back into his robe. A look outside the window confirmed that the day would still be warm but bearable, and resplendant with nature.

Parlan left his room, walking slowly through the halls of quietude that formed the main section of the temple. He did not meet anyone on the way. There were guests in the temple these days, travellers from other systems who wanted to explore the Amarrian faith, but they would be working in the fields.

Once he’d left the halls and entered the world of the living, it took him a moment to get used to the brightness, the smells and sounds, the slumbering freshness of it all. This temple, sitting as it did in the middle of golden fields of extensive farmlands, felt like the head of a body: Quiet and cold, silent and meditative, and ideally divorced from the messy vagaries of the lesser orders of daily life.

He walked at a slow pace with no particular destination in mind. A keen eye was enough for nature to provide him with any number of distractions, and for that he was thankful. He let the leaves on the trees fascinate him, their veins showing through the remainder of the golden sunlight; and he imagined what it would be like to soar like the birds above him, who barely seemed to bat their wings. He looked to the hills in the distance, too; grey and covered in their own smoky haze.

That was another reality. He would be there tomorrow.

The winding paths eventually led him back towards the temple. On his way there he walked past the conference area: A small, secluded spot where acolytes could sit on wooden benches and discuss the tenets of their faith under sunny skies. He came close enough that he could recognize the few people who were sitting there, talking quietly. In this place it was held that thoughts on faith should be shared.

Not all thoughts could be shared. Parlan sighed.

He found a tall tree, sturdy tree with heavily foliated branches and sat down in its shade. He was close enough to the conference area that he could hear the soft murmurs of words. He shut his eyes and listened. Even at this distance, where the words were unintelligible, he could recognize some of the voices. He imagined that one of them was speaking to him. He realized that listening for a precious voice was, in fact, a very religious activity, and he grinned to himself.

Someone right next to him – a woman’s voice he didn’t recognize – asked if she could sit down. He opened his eyes.

She had blonde hair, beautiful in the fading sun, though it stood in contrast with a subdued harshness of her expression. He expected that the harshness had been there before she arrived. This place eased the minds of its inhabitants, at least those who could leave their ill longings behind them.

He realized she was waiting for an answer, so he nodded and smiled.

She explained, without too many words, that she was one of the visitors – one of the ‘rich’ guests, she called herself, with a clear sense of self-irony that he appreciated – and that she’d been working in the fields all day, was tired and sweaty, had gotten sick of the drama among her own people – a recent theft in the temple had started to fray their tempers – and wanted to relax in the presence of someone who looked like they could use some rest themselves.

She was forthright when tired, she warned him. He said he had rather suspected that, and she laughed. He liked her already.

They talked for a while about life on this planet and life elsewhere. She was a mission agent, she told him, and had been working out of her home planet in the Gallente Federation. He’d heard of the profession, although it was rare for the colony to receive agents of any stripe. She asked if the agents in the Amarr Empire didn’t tend to have crises of faith with the work they were doing, and he said that they did not, for the ones who aspired to the profession were driven, rather than hampered, by their faith, and did not need to buttress it. She said that she did not know whether she envied them, and he admitted that he did not know, either.

During the conversation he had stolen a few looks at the crowd sitting by the conference area, still talking, and eventually his companion at the tree – whose name, it turned out, was Heci – asked him if he had other things than faith on his mind.

He closed his eyes and rubbed them.

“Is it really that obvious?” he said, quietly, even though he knew no one could hear him but this woman and God.

“No,” she said, to his relief. “But I have desires of my own to deal with -not for you, darling,” she added with a grin, patting him on the shoulder and eliciting a snort of laughter from him, “- and they make me see these things. You know how it is. When you look for signs of God, you see Him everywhere. Same with other things.”

He nodded.

She fell silent, closed her own eyes and leaned her head back against the tree. She did not ask him to elaborate, but he knew she would listen.

He was not sure whether he could discuss this, even though she had caught him. He could admit to a sin in the abstract, but revealing details – speaking them aloud – would make it real, and not merely an imagination inside his own head.

But he wanted to talk about this – he needed to – and he doubted he would ever find a safer conversant for it. Besides, compounding it with the sin of lying wouldn’t enamor him with the holy.

“I have never acted on it,” he said, even quieter than before.

“Never?” she asked.

“Well, look at me,” he said amusedly, and held up the end of his robe.

She smiled and nodded. “Not much opportunity for romance, is there,” she said, not really asking.

“Do you love anyone?” he asked.

She looked away, to the vistas beyond. “Too many, really. Including your kind of love.”

“My kind of love?” he said. He understood her, but he really hadn’t thought it had been that obvious.

“The one that’s not allowed? Oh yes. I know that one very well,” she said, nodding towards the acolytes by the conference and, he thought, in particular towards the one he’d been looking at. She continued, “Even if most of it was only physical – I hope I’m not making you uncomfortable with this…”

“No, no,” he said.

Heci said, “Unrequited love is a bitch. You give all you dare and don’t get the same back, even as you want to give so much more. You have to continually accept that you are not the one setting the limits, but the other person, who decides how much of you they are ready to take.”

She shifted, rubbed her back against the tree. “So even when it was mostly physical, there was always some degree of love there. You just have to accept it for what it is, and allow it to exist in your heart as long as it cares to stay there.”

The idea that he would have to live with these feelings, unrequited, for the rest of conscious time made Parlan intensely uncomfortable.

“So how do you deal with heartbreak?” he asked, truly hoping that her answer would imply some end to the way he felt, some course these feelings would naturally take that would eventually lead them to extinction.

And she did not. She said, “The heart is resilient and cannot be broken, merely disassembled for a while.”

They sat there for a while, looking out at nature and God’s creations, and when the sun went down he left without a word. He kept the peace and walked back to his room, where he sat and read scripture long into the night until he couldn’t stand it any longer, then took a shower so cold he gagged from the shock, crawled trembling into bed, wrapped himself in the sheets and shivered into sleep, the warmth rising slowly from within him.

***

The next morning it was his turn to visit the mines, as everyone who worked on the settlement had to do from time to time. It was a long day’s walk and gave him time to think. Something about last night’s conversation, in that shade of the silent tree, had begun to comfort him even though the shock of it had been too much for his tired head at the time. There was an inevitability to his feelings that he had not realized before his talk with Heci.

The mines, when he got to them, were the same pit of stink, ash, smoke and misery as they always had been. The Amarr Empire kept slaves, and on this planet some of those slaves tilled the fields alongside the acolytes, while others, not yet ascended, lived and worked in this place. Some day they, or their children or their own children, might be lifted up to the fields, but until then they slaved under the eyes of God.

Parlan was inured to their pain – the world was full of suffering and it made no more sense even if one brooded on it – but he eased it the best he could. For hours on end he walked among them, in their thousands, bringing them water as they hacked at the earth. As he poured he sometimes thought of the one he loved. Some of the slaves thanked him, others – too tired, he reasoned – did not, but in every pair of eyes there was a quiet acceptance. They did not resent his presence here, nor particularly welcome it: He was merely here, and they were thankful for him while he stayed. This life they led was their lot just as Parlan’s was his, until the day God decided otherwise.

He spent most of his day there. Some of the incoming slaves from the fields, attending briefly on their own business, mentioned that there’d been a commotion back at the settlement. He didn’t care. His lot was to be here, and give his love to these people.

At the end his robe was caked with dust, and he could not even see his fingerprints for the clay that had covered his skin. When he finally went back to the settlement he saw everyone outside, with serious faces, and something starting in the open expanse of the conversation area.

As he watched, one of the settlement slaves – an assistant to the head minister, and someone he knew had family in the mines – was dragged out there, stripped, and tied down. The minister announced that he had been guilty of the recent theft.

The slave overseer arrived, with his tools. It went on for a while. Everyone watched, some looking upset, others – including Heci – horrified and disgusted, and a few looking hungry for more.

Parlan did not react, one way or another. The clay felt cool on his dry skin.

There is a mindset where you achieve quiet and tranquility not by accepting things the way they are, but accepting that they are the way they are.

When it was over he retired to his quarters, where he read scripture until he fell asleep in his chair.