The street outside the Theif-Taker General’s restaurant was filled with the murmurs of a gated crowd, held back by the Shett Mercenaries’ visible armaments. The crowd watched with horror and intrigue as the Imperial Marines and Shett Mercenaries rushed through the entrances to the building. They watched with anticipation as gunshots echoed into the street.

When silence reigned again, Provost Inquisitor Darenius Morgsste marched into the building with a scowl on his face.

Too easy. Darenius was sure it had been too easy.

He’d cornered the Human only once before, and the Human had sown the ground around him with horrors none of his men could have imagined. Three squadrons had died at the Human’s hands: to hidden explosives, stolen rifle fire, and more mundane traps built by the savage natives. The few that had survived the traps died from an infection.

So why hadn’t the Human fought back here? Why was there nothing more than a token defense force made up of poorly trained service workers?

It didn’t make sense, and he was unsurprised when his marines reported that no one was inside the offices behind the restaurant. He was surprised, however, to find that the office was not empty.

As he entered, he noticed the faint light of an infrared laser near the door – something only a Vyrăis would see as their eyes were able to perceive the lowest edge of the infrared spectrum. He stepped over it, but he suspected that whatever sensor it was connected to had been tripped when the soldiers entered. And yet, no explosions: which was concerningly tame.

The office floor was bare of all but a glass table with a screen resting on it. Darenius didn’t recognize the plastic box hooked into the screen’s ports. He could tell furniture once had occupied the space, worn sections of floor revealed where couches had once stood and seen regular use. His marines also reported that the upper level was much the same, with some evidence of heavy machinery mounts in one room.

On the other side of the room, a pair of Shett mercenaries slowly scanned the walls – once more, they showed their proactive nature as Darenius had not ordered the action. They slowly passed a handheld emitter over the wall, which pulsed out ultrasonic waves and listened for the echo. Such devices were often used to find smugglers’ hidden compartments. If there was anything hidden in the Human’s den, they would find it.

Darenius jumped in surprise as the screen turned itself on, playing the opening jingle of Torus Terminal’s news network.

“Good evening, m-my friends,” the Anchor-woman stuttered as she read from a stack of sheets in her shaking claws. Her voice echoed, and Darenius spun to look out the door of the restaurant. The screens in the street had switched from silent adverts to the same broadcast, and the crowds watched intently.

“I know better than m-most that word travels quickly from the docks to the city. But all of you will have noticed the Anti-Euclidean Engines, and the Imperial Warship orbiting our home. The Empire has arrived. They do not bring blessings, or trade, or the aide that so many of you desperately need. Instead, they send an Inquisitor, who will arrest or kill the Thief-Taker General.

“You all know the Thief-Taker General, he who went above and beyond his duty as a commissioned police officer: He fed the hungry; gave work and pay when both were in short supply; gave beds to the homeless and offered education when no one else would. The Thief-Taker General reduced crime, but like the rest of you, he offered those he arrested all he had,” the Anchor-woman read. “And now they will kill him for it.

“Will you stand by while the Empire and the selfish elite take away all that he has built for you?-“

The screen flashed with static, and Darenius hissed as he recognized the voice that interrupted to say: “Would you?” as the anchor-woman continued to read outside.

“Human!” Darenius hissed.

The Human was in the full frame of the camera, held unsteadily by someone off-screen. He stood at the top of a set of stairs, the spotlights in the ceiling of the station shone from behind him – not quite bright enough to cast him into a silhouette, but enough to darken his features.

The Human was … different than Darenius remembered. When they’d pulled the Human from its sepulcher, wet and coughing and thin and feeble, he had doubted the creature could be any threat. Even in the forests, when it had used traps and cowardly tactics to whittle away at his soldiers, the Human had skulked in the leafy shadows and never engaged directly. But now, despite the poor lighting, Darenius could see corded muscle bulge beneath neatly pressed clothing. And the bladed mace – a piece of cross steel, modified with sharpened edges and a massive, star-shaped tip – that he leaned on like a cane, did not strike him as a weapon that would be used from the shadows.

“It’s nice to see you again, too, Leftenant,” the Human – the Thief-Taker General – grinned. “It has been too long.”

“It’s been almost thirty years,” Darenius growled. He was confident now that the Human had predicted his presence here, and if he wanted to hear Darenius, then he would.

“About twenty from my point of view,” the Human shrugged. “I am surprised, though. I would think after your failures on Laetus that the Emperor would have stripped you of your rank, rather than raise it.”

The camera shifted in unsteady hands, and more of the background was revealed. Darenius narrowed his eyes as he carefully noted the details behind and around the Human. He would happily let the creature gloat if it revealed his quarry’s location.

“Perhaps your savage people might have, but the Emperor knows not to waste a resource like me,” Darenius hissed. Perhaps if he could trap the Human in a conversation, Darenius could divine the Human’s location. He tried to fix everything he could into his memory, everything from the color of the walls near him to the pattern of the spotlights above his head. “What about the other one? I tracked the Female to this station as well,” he offered. If the Humans hadn’t met, then perhaps he could trip up his prey.

“I wouldn’t worry about her, Darenius,” the Human said as his grin turned into a sneer. “It’s not her trap you’ve marched your soldiers into.”

Darenius scoffed. “If there was a trap here, it would have sprung by now. It is you who is trapped. Trapped on this station. You’re exactly where I want you,” Darenius sneered in return.

“No, Darenius,” the General said. His grin faded into a severe deadly glare. “You are exactly where I want you.”

The screen froze and framed over the Human’s shoulder was a metal plate. And emblazoned in all its glory, was the emblem of the Imperial Highway Corps. Only two places on the entire station would have an emblem like that: on the giant pillars that housed the Anti-Euclidean Engines, and in the bowels of the station where the light rider lasers resided – but there were no spotlights by the lasers.

“We found something,” one of the Shett near the rear of the room announced as he put down his detector. He began to pry at a panel in the wall with his miniature hands, and Darenius spun to face them with sudden dread: the Human’s parting threat suddenly loomed large in his mind.

“Wait! Don’t open that-“

If Darenius had anything more to say, it was lost as the Shett managed to pry open one of the doors to the General’s hidden shelves. The magnetic trigger attached to the door was released, and the capacitors on their other end shorted through a wire that connected to seven blasting caps. The blasting caps were, in turn, imbedded into the rest of the cabinets, which were packed full with a mixture of Ammonium Nitrate and the Fuel Oil used to run orbital mining drones.

The resulting shock wave made anything Darenius might have said irrelevant.

~,~’~{~{@ ((●(●_(●_(Θ_Θ)(Θ_Θ)_●)●)) @}~}~’~,~

The Singer looked on in horror as Torus Terminal burned.

High definition surveillance cameras across the station recorded impassively as workers rioted. Xenos of every kind marched through the streets. For now, they contented themselves with destroying the offices and businesses in wealthier Blocks. Still, she could see some Xenos urging on the others – stoking the fires of fear and hate inside their fellow citizens.

The Anchor-woman’s words and the expanding cloud of smoke and fire over the General’s restaurant had sparked it all. She’d tried to get the Anchor-woman to go back on the camera. To urge the people of Torus Terminal to stop the senseless destruction. But Dar-Tin had stopped them.

“You’re done here, Singer, you need to be at the docks now,” Dar-Tin insisted when the Singer tried to press. “The General was very clear,” she said as she glanced at the prisoners, “if things get hairy, you need to be ready to leave.”

Dar-Tin didn’t say it, but the Singer remembered that the General had planned for this. They needed a smoke-screen to get onto the Imperial ship and back to Laetus. If the Empire caught wind of their piracy, then all the suffering would be for nothing.

Still, she hadn’t imagined it would be this bad. Somehow, she’d expected it to be different from the way Humans would riot. Dar-Tin and her soldiers were violent, but they were veteran soldiers – violence had been trained into them. But it seemed the General had been right again, a herding species was not a gentle one.

As if to punctuate the thought, one of the displays in the News Studio switched to a different feed. The new camera had a perfect view as a mixed-species mob dragged a finely dressed Vyrăis from a building and began to relentlessly beat the Xeno into submission. When the crowd moved on, the Vyrăis did not move again.

“Let’s go, Singer,” Brettn insisted. One of his shoulder tentacles wrapped around her wrist, and once again, she found she hadn’t noticed she was clenching her hands into fists.

It was only as she let the Ventusi lead her away from the screens that she realized she’d been holding the General’s ring. It kept her hands busy with its many ridges and shapes, a small balm to her anxious energy. As she opened her hand, she saw that the Oroboros carved into its face had left an impression in her palm.

The serpent’s eye seemed to stare accusingly at her even as the mark faded.

“I’m going to have to have a long talk with him after this,” she hissed as she followed Brettn out of the station.

“Why do you seem so insistent on drawing his attention?” Brettn asked. He led her quickly down the street, strategically away from main roads. “It’s like you seek him out, but every time you do, you just find more to disagree about. It’s like you hate him, but you won’t stop talking to him.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just ignore him? Ignore that?” she asked as they rounded a corner to find another mob of station-folk.

A building burned on the other side of the crowd, the flames spread choking smoke and embers that could easily ignite others. Yet, the mob fought against the first responders – Xenos in bright orange uniforms armed with fire retardant canisters were being held back and attacked by the crowd in the street.

“Yes,” Brettn insisted as he once again led her by the hand away from the fighting. “Wouldn’t you be happier that way?”

“It’s not about what makes me happy,” the Singer insisted. “It’s about what’s right.”

“Do you really think that will matter to him?” Brettn asked reluctantly.

She didn’t get the chance to say more as they rounded the corner into the General’s private hangar – or rather, the hangar of one of the shipping companies he’d “acquired.”

Inside, the future crew of their escape vessel bustled about as they prepared a cargo shuttle for departure. The Cargo shuttle was not a pretty thing, big and boxy – though, the ramp at the back brought remembered images of the yawning mouths of cargo planes to the front of her mind. But cargo planes hadn’t ever had sections of other shuttles welded haphazardly across the hull like Frankenstein’s monster.

Surprisingly, it was a Vyrăis giving orders to the crew as they worked – the red sash of First Officer was unmistakable, however. And the Oroboros insignia pinned to his chest assured the Singer that the General had placed the Xeno in command.

The First Officer was loud and firm, though it seemed most of the organization work was being done by a Ventusi with a yellow sash – the Logistics Officer if the Singer remembered correctly. No one was left out of the job of loading, she even spotted green sashed Weapons Specialists hauling tightly bound packages or rolling racks of heavy equipment up the ramps.

The Viribus, however, were occupied with the troops. A motley and a surprisingly small group of T’nann. Their shouting dominated the hangar.

“What makes the grass grow?!” Sheh’teh roared in a way that the Singer had never heard before, even as the poet warrior carefully and precisely wrapped her many hands in Kevlar and ceramic.

“Blood!” the marines around her roared, carefully checking their equipment as they too prepared for war. “Blood!” Even the other two Viribus joined in the chant. They shouted as they sharpened the edges of their claws. “Blood!” they all chanted as they loaded their weapons and inspected the grenades looped to their belts.

“What do we do?!” Sheh’teh demanded, her voice enough to ring the hangar walls like a bell. She moved on from the armored ribbons around her hands to a carefully folded set of Kevlar armor.

“Kill!” the marines declared as they donned their helmets. The helmets would not protect against vacuum, but the Kevlar lining could save them from a bullet. “Kill!” they shouted as the last of the pirate crew loaded onto the cargo shuttle. “Kill!” they chorused as they followed them on and took up positions near the front – where they could leap through the airlock and begin doing what they did best.

The Singer jumped as a scaly hand grasped her shoulder and turned to find the First Officer. He silently urged her toward the shuttle, where Brettn had disappeared past the marines and a wall of cargo.

“It’s time to go, ma’am,” the Vyrăis said. He had to shout to be heard as Sheh’teh urged on another round of “Kill! Kill! Kill!” from her marines.

“Wait, where’s the General?” she asked, though she wasn’t sure the Vyrăis had heard because he started physically pushing her toward the shuttle.

“Your seat is near the rear, with the other officers!” the First Officer shouted as the shuttle’s systems began to spool up. Despite lacking a jet turbine of any kind, the boxy vessel managed to emit a surprising amount of noise.

“Where’s the General?!” she demanded again. This time, she realized, he was ignoring her on purpose, and she caught the drawn expression on the First Officer’s face. “What is it?” she demanded as the shuttle’s doors swung closed behind them, and the Officer began to guide her around the cargo.

“He’s not coming,” the Vyrăis finally admitted as he forcefully secured her to a harness mounted on one wall of the shuttle. “I have orders to make sure you don’t go after him.”

The Singer froze in shock. “He’s staying?” she asked incredulously. “No, wait, this doesn’t make sense,” she said. She pulled at the First Officer’s hands to try to get at the straps, but instead, he took hold of her wrists and forced her hands over her head. The Singer froze again as she felt the cold metal and the ratcheting click of a pair of handcuffs slide over her wrists.

“Once we are underway, and if you promise to stay away from the pipes and the pilots, I’ll take them off,” the First Officer said reluctantly. “Just so you know, I don’t like it either. He saved my life, and now we have to watch while he-“ the Vyrăis choked on the words, and the Singer felt her outrage start to dim as she recognized the torn expression on his face:

Grief.

“No,” she said with dread as she realized what the Vyrăis had implied. “No! No! No! We can’t let him do this!” She could already tell what the fallout of his death would be. His “smoke-screen” had been bad enough, but martyrdom … she couldn’t imagine a more unifying factor. The riot would turn into an all-out rebellion, fuelled by the death of a messiah.

But worse of all, she realized, was that she would be alone again.

She would have the Viribus, and Brettn and Old Bess, too. She could see the Ventusi through the cargo, strapped into their own harnesses for launch. She was even sure she’d come to like this First Officer and his crew. But they weren’t Human.

“Let me talk to him,” she said as her desperation grew. “A phone, a radio, anything!” she demanded. She pulled against the chain as the Vyrăis pulled away, and the shuttle’s hums began to increase.

“Once we are underway!” the First Officer yelled over the sound as he strapped himself into the final empty harness.

Despite the vastness of the cargo compartment, the Singer felt as if the walls were closing in around her. As the Singer felt the gravity suddenly drop away, with it went any sense of calm she’d previously held onto.

~,~’~{~{@ ((●(●_(●_(Θ_Θ)(Θ_Θ)_●)●)) @}~}~’~,~

The General nervously adjusted his grip on the pommel of his mace-come-walking stick. He listened to his radio impassively as his T’nann troops, all of them loyal to a fault, moved into position around the Anti-Euclidean Engine’s facility.

The garrisons within were mostly empty, but the sniper towers that ringed the giant pillar of tubes and conduits kept a careful watch. The security had been hastily withdrawn and redeployed to protect other essential station facilities – as well as council-members – against the roaming riots. And every time those Imperial forces clashed with the station’s residents, the outrage of the general public grew.

If nothing changed, then soon the entirety of Torus Terminal would be on fire.

It was precisely what he’d hoped for.

With a well-timed rush, the Anti-Euclidean Engine facility would be under his control. He would be free to conduct his business, retreat all but what was necessary to provide a token resistance to the Inquisitor – and whoever else had survived his surprise left at his home base – and indulge in a bit of well-earned revenge.

Still, the hole in the General’s side throbbed with pain, and he nervously adjusted his grip on the mace he used as a cane.

Was it fear he felt? No. Anticipation, admittedly, but not fear. What did the General have to fear? Failure? Out of his hands. The piracy operation would be headed by the Viribus, who had proven themselves to be superior warriors in every way to Imperial marines and sailors. If they could not do it, then it could not be done.

Death? No, he did not fear death. He already died once. He knew where that road led.

No, if there was anything he was afraid of, it was a success.

Ever since he’d entered the Temple on Laetus he’d been plagued with questions of his conception. Not the mechanics of his immortality and the circumstances of his biology, but rather the question of purpose.

He’d been forcefully pulled from the sepulcher by Imperial forces, but he was sure it was Father that had shaped his mind and soul. So then, what was the purpose He’d envisioned when He’d planted these memories within the General? Of the other dozens of Humans that might have been chosen by the Imperials, why had he been chosen?

Would it have mattered? If one of the others had been selected first, would it still be him who woke up? The same mind and soul in a different body?

And why wait until now? Why not one hundred years ago? Or a thousand?

The hole in his mind yawned, and he couldn’t escape the feeling that if he could simply reach far enough into it, all his questions would be answered. And before him was the best chance he had. He knew that the Gates required energy, and what better to open them than a device built specifically to bend spacetime?

He hadn’t dared to try with a ship reactor, or a power distribution plant on a station. There had been too much riding on his input: The Poet Warriors would have been forever lost within the Imperial highways, and Laetus would still be under siege. But now? There was nothing left but a terrible purpose that he could not name.

He dreaded not knowing, but he also dreaded the answer.