Chapter Twenty-Three

Decommissioned Science Facility, Within the Borders of the Empire

The nameless planet hung in space before Sister Night, taking up the yacht’s entire front viewport and extending far beyond. Its surface seethed with motion as great orange and red clouds were spun across it by hurricane-force winds, and despite the distance, Pakorus could almost imagine he saw the flicker of lightning deep within them. It was a humbling, awe-inspiring sight, and yet not the reason they were here. Tiny in comparison, an oblong shape hung in orbit around the planet, all that remained of a project the Empire had gone to great lengths to bury – and yet had nonetheless produced assassins who had terrorized the Dozen Stars.

“There it is,” Midaia breathed from where she sat in her chair in the yacht’s cockpit. “It doesn’t look like much – just another old, derelict space station – but inside, if we’re lucky, we’ll find the answers we seek.”

“Do you have a plan for getting in?” Pakorus asked, trying his hardest to keep the apprehension from his voice. “Specter’s people couldn’t, and he seems like the sort to hire the best.”

Midaia turned to look at him; she’d pulled on her hooded cloak once again and her face was shadowed now, giving it an ominous, mysterious cast. “Specter,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument, “didn’t have me.”

Slowly the station grew in their viewport until it hung directly before them; utterly dwarfed as it was by the titanic planet it orbited, it was still several times the size of their little yacht. It roughly resembled a flattened oval in shape, made from cold, grey metal, featureless save for the emblem that had been painted on its side – the double-headed eagle of the Empire, rendered in a dark red. In the shadow of the gas giant and the dim light of the system’s distant sun, the eagle looked like it had been painted in blood. Pakorus suppressed a shudder, hoping that his observation wasn’t an omen.

Midaia pulled Sister Night up beside the station, then flipped a few switches; Pakorus felt the ship groan as a boarding passage extended from its side, anchoring itself to the station’s airlock. “Now,” the Adept said, standing, “it’s time to see if I really am as good at this as I think I am.” Gesturing for Pakorus to follow, she swept from the cabin and made her way down the yacht’s central corridor until she finally reached the boarding passage. The airlock on the other side was still sealed, with a small keypad beside it the only sign of how it might be opened.

“What now?” Pakorus asked. “I don’t suppose Specter was able to give you the password?”

“As a matter of fact, he wasn’t,” Midaia said, kneeling before the keypad and regarding it critically. “But I have my ways; don’t worry.” She pulled a small device from a pocket in her robes and planted it on the keypad, then placed her hand atop it. The device hummed to life as Midaia closed her eyes, and red light flickered around her hand. The keypad whirred beneath her touch, and then, with a loud ping, the airlock slid open, revealing only darkness beyond.

“How did you do that?” Pakorus asked as Midaia stood, stowing her small machine back in her robe.

“My little tool there is a lockpick, of sorts,” she said, straightening herself. “It can run through every possible combination of codes far faster than a human ever could, and it keeps the door from locking itself down after too many failed attempts, too. A light application of my Adept’s arts sped things along.”

“You can use your powers on machines?” Pakorus asked, surprised.

Midaia shrugged. “Machines are made of matter and energy, just as living beings are,” she said. “The technique for manipulating them is different, of course – it’s a lot easier to make them blow up than it is to do anything constructive – but I’ve had time to learn some tricks. This was an easy one, since I was just making my lockpick work faster than it normally would. Imposing my will on an entire computer system that I don’t have access to is much harder. Luckily,” she patted the side of her cloak, “I have other tools to help with that. Now, are you done asking questions, or are you ready to head in?”

Pakorus drew a deep breath to steady himself, patted the beam pistol holstered at his side, and nodded. “I’m ready,” he said.

“Excellent,” Midaia replied; stepping forward, she held up her right hand, which began to glow with an eerie red light. Slowly, the light drifted into the air above her palm, where it formed into a glowing ball that came to hover beside her head, casting a dim glow around her that was nonetheless bright enough to see by. Her strange light source following just behind, Midaia stepped into the space station, Pakorus following just behind.

They found themselves in a long corridor; even in this light, it looked dusty and dim. Just from the look of things, Pakorus didn’t think anyone had been here for a very long time. Midaia picked her way along slowly, pausing every so often to run a finger along the dusty walls or examine some bit of wiring, but so far, they had found nothing that appeared to be of interest.

Finally, they came to an intersection in the corridors; the way ahead carried on straight, as did the right-hand turn; the left turn, however, went only a short distance before rising in a flight of stairs up to a door; so far as Pakorus could see in Midaia’s light, the door was unmarked, bearing neither sign nor insignia.

“Which way do we go?” he asked.

Midaia turned to look at him, frowning under her hood. “I’m not sure,” she said. “We’re trying to find a terminal from which I can access this facility’s main computer network; unfortunately, I have no idea where that would be. I’m not exactly an expert on Imperial design protocols, and in any case, this facility isn’t typical. That door up there is probably an office of some kind, but whether it has what I’m looking for I’m not sure. If that doesn’t work, let’s try the right-hand turn. Something about the straight way is making me uneasy, though I’m not sure why.”

She shook her head and turned towards the stairs, but before she could start to climb Pakorus saw something flashing in the depths of the straight corridor – a single, floating red eye, now rushing towards them. He barely had time to shout a warning before the thing emerged into the light – the floating, vaguely box-like shape of an Imperial security mech. The mech spun towards Midaia and without warning it opened fire with beam cannon that were built into its chassis. Midaia gave a surprised shout and fell back, throwing her hands up in the air; the bolts were intercepted by a shimmer of red light before they could strike. Then Pakorus drew his beam pistol from his holster, flipped the safety off, and fired, catching the mech clear in its central red eye. The thing gave a disconcertingly lifelike screech, and then clattered to the floor, sparking. Its guns wavered, as if still trying to find a target, then fell still.

Pakorus walked over to the mech and kicked it; no response. “Well, that was unexpected,” he said.

“Quite,” said Midaia, standing. “My compliments on your shooting, by the way. Well, if nothing else, we’ve found out that the Empire’s security mechs are still active – some of them, anyway. Which would seem to support Specter’s theory that there’s something here they don’t want people to find.” She walked over to the mech and looked down at it with disgust. “Shiran never had much use for these things,” she said. “And neither do I. Remove the human from combat and what do you have left – heartless, soulless killing machines that exist solely to follow their programming, no matter what atrocities it breeds. The metaphor made literal.” She shook her head.

“Do you think there are any more of those?” Pakorus asked.

“Security mechs are rarely deployed alone,” Midaia said. “It’s possible this one was the last one functional – but I wouldn’t count on it. And the rest likely know we’re here by now. I recommend we check the office straightaway. Let’s get our work done quickly and get out, before we find ourselves buried in security mechs.”

Pakorus found that he heartily agreed.

///

The door at the top of the stairs was locked; this did not, however, prove to be a significant obstacle as Midaia studied the lock for several seconds and then made a gesture that caused it to fall apart in her hands. The room inside was small and bare; whoever had worked here at one time, it seemed they stripped almost everything from the office when they left, leaving only a desk and chair that were both bolted down behind. If there had been any computer in the room it must have been portable, because there was no sign of it here now.

“Damn,” Midaia muttered under her breath. “I’d been hoping…” with a sigh she got down on her knees and peered underneath the desk, as if expecting to find a hidden terminal there, or even a secret message written on the underside.

As she worked, Pakorus turned around, his gaze taking in the bare walls and ceiling – and then he froze, something he could barely glimpse on the back of the office door catching his eye. Shoving the door gently closed, he could now make out what it was he’d seen only briefly before – a diagram of the facility, etched directly into the metal. Whatever labels might have once been on this map seemed to have peeled away, but tracing with his finger, he followed what had been the right hand passage from where they’d entered the facility down towards what appeared to be a cavernously large chamber – one with what appeared to be operating tables etched inside it.

“Midaia,” Pakorus called.

“What?” the Adept asked, sticking her head up from behind the desk, her dark hair askew.

“I think,” Pakorus said, pointing towards the diagram, “I may have found the main laboratory.”

///

They met nothing as they followed the corridor down to the large room, Midaia’s ball of light drifting slightly ahead; still, Pakorus felt jumpy, half-expecting another of the security mechs to come bursting out of every side-corridor they passed, until they finally stepped through a door into the laboratory itself.

The room was larger by far than anywhere they’d been so far, with Midaia’s glowing ball unable to illuminate all of it. Here again the walls and ceilings were bare of decoration, but the sides were lined by a series of machines that had been too heavy to move. Here were a series of beds, each sized to roughly fit an adult human, and above each bed there hung, immobile, a complex set of robotic arms.

Pakorus felt his skin grow cold as he approached the nearest of the beds, stopping to run a finger along its edge and then holding it up to examine the dust. Turning, he looked up at the robotic arms, which seemed to wait like some quiescent predator that might yet become dangerous one day, and he shivered. “This is where it happened,” he breathed. “This is where the Commander and his cyborgs were… created.” He shook his head. “What sort of a person would volunteer to go through a process like that, anyway? What sort of power would be worth giving up your humanity?”

“You’d be surprised what price people will pay,” Midaia said. “And you speak with the prejudice of a true subject of the Dozen Stars. The Empire, historically, has been rather more relaxed about creating cyborgs, especially when it has military advantage. People actually sign up to become Praetorians, you know. It’s quite the honor. Still, the Commander’s alterations were quite extensive and can’t have been pleasant, especially for a mission he’d never be recognized for. I wonder what they offered him to make him agree to the procedure.”

Turning, she glided over to a console by the door, just in front of one of the surgical beds; it had a chair in front of it, and Midaia took a seat there, blowing dust off the controls. “Perhaps this,” she said, “might hold our answers.”

Reaching forward with her right hand, she raised her fingers up and a thin rod extended from the device on her wrist, which Pakorus had taken to simply be an unusual comm. The rod inserted itself into a data port, and a moment later the computer hummed back to life, flashing text across its screen faster than Pakorus could read it. Midaia sat completely still for a long moment, her expression intense, and then she cursed under her breath.

“The computer’s memory has been wiped,” she growled. “Of course, it has. The only thing still there is a message warning whoever reads it that this program was terminated by order of His Imperial Majesty, Verus Licinius, repeated in various ways. Dammit!”

“Is that it, then?” Pakorus asked. “Is there nothing else you can do?”

“If I was an ordinary person, then yes, there would be nothing I could do,” Midaia said. “Fortunately for us both, I’m not an ordinary person. I’m me. And even erased data may leave traces in the energy of what we sometimes call the psychic plane. I might be able to retrieve it – or at least some of it. This could take a while, and it’s very important that you don’t interrupt me. Understand?”

“Completely,” Pakorus said; Midaia nodded and returned her attention to the console, staring intently at the screen while holding her hands out, palm down, over the keyboard. For a moment, nothing happened, and then her hands started glowing faintly red.

Pakorus sighed, turning away from the Adept and wandering among the surgical beds, staring at them and the waiting arms above with a horrified fascination. Even with Midaia’s explanation, he still couldn’t understand why someone would voluntarily do something like that to themselves. It seemed too much like a classic Evil One’s bargain to him; gaining power for the price of one’s essential humanity. But on the other hand, if the Commander hadn’t chosen this, if such a procedure could be forced on someone against their will – that just made it worse, somehow.

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of a distant humming. Spinning towards the door, he saw another of the security mechs enter; it focused its red eye on Midaia, the nearer target, and turned towards her, extending its guns. Pakorus acted without thinking; aiming his beam pistol, he fired, taking this mech as well directly through the eye. It clattered to the ground, hissing and sparking, but then another one came through the door… and another… and more after that…

Pakorus swore and fired, managing to hit this mech in its engines and down it as well; unfortunately, all this seemed to accomplish was to get their attention focused on him. The machines turned to face him, their mechanical red eyes unblinking as they drifted forward, guns bristling. Pakorus managed to duck behind one of the beds as they opened fire, the bed itself taking the assault. After a moment that seemed like an eternity the guns fell silent, leaving no sound but the faint hum of their engines. He knew that the things weren’t truly intelligent and were only acting according to their programming, but he still imagined them conferring silently among themselves, determining how best to rid themselves of this annoying human.

Sticking his head around the edge of the bed, Pakorus let out another shot; this one only grazed the side of one of the mechs, and it turned slowly towards him and began drifting around the bed. Pakorus waited patiently, each breath thundering in his ears as he waited for the thing to get closer, and then suddenly, he was interrupted by Midaia giving a triumphant shout. The mech paused, and Pakorus jumped out, his shot taking it directly through the eye at point-blank range. Sputtering, it spun and collapsed to the ground.

Behind it, several of the other mechs had reoriented towards Midaia, who was standing now and facing them completely unconcerned; they raised their guns to open fire, but she made a broad sweeping motion with her hand and an arc of red light scythed out, slicing the mechs neatly in two. As their pieces fell to the floor, Pakorus shot the last one through the engine, causing it to begin spiraling erratically.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” he asked, panting. “I have no idea how many more of these are coming.”

“I got something,” Midaia said, “and I think we can use it. Now, I think we should…”

Whatever she was going to say, it was interrupted by the final mech, which reoriented its red eye on her and then spoke in a tinny, electronic voice. “Intruder alert,” it said, “intruders detected. Facility has been compromised. All Imperial personnel must evacuate; self-destruct imminent. Intruder alert…”

Pakorus went cold, and shot the mech straight through its chassis, but that wasn’t enough to stop whatever procedure it had initiated. Red lights began flashing along the ceiling, and the high wail of an alarm echoed through the halls. “I guess we pushed them too far after all,” Midaia said, voice surprisingly calm. “Now, let’s not hang around here discussing things. If you want to live, run!”

Reflecting on the events later, Pakorus wasn’t entirely sure how they made it back to their ship, hurrying through the corridors as fast as they could run, Midaia’s dark cape flapping behind her. They met more of the security mechs, though Pakorus couldn’t say for sure how many; luckily Midaia was able to shield them from their beam fire while he blasted those who got too close out of the way with his pistol. Finally, the siren wailing in their ears and the red lights flashing around them, they stumbled back to the airlock and practically dove into the waiting Sister Night, sealing the door tightly shut behind them. No sooner were they inside than Midaia barreled into the cockpit, not even bothering to take a seat as she started the engines, disengaged the yacht from the space station, and set a course away from the gas giant and towards deep space.

They had barely gotten away when the laboratory explored behind them in a brilliant flash of blue-white light, the blast throwing pieces of degree all about them. Then the shockwave hit, and the yacht was knocked off its course, shaking as it spun off into space – and then, finally, it stilled as outside, the light died. It was over; they’d survived. Pakorus collapsed into the copilot’s chair, panting heavily with relief.

Finally, he looked over at Midaia, who was now slumped in her own seat. “So, what did you get, anyway?” he asked. “Was it worth it?”

“I wasn’t able to get much,” she said. “Just flashes, really. It’ll take time to put it all together, and even then, there will be holes. Reconstructing deleted data from a hard drive isn’t as easy as it sounds. One thing did come through clearly, though. After the Commander and his assassins were refitted at the lab, they were sent to an Imperial military base to receive their equipment and their instructions before heading on to the Dozen Stars.”

“So, the Empire was behind the assassins after all,” Pakorus breathed, his mind reeling at the implications.

“So, it would seem,” Midaia said. “And, at least at the time the data was deleted, that base was still operational – which means its records would be intact. I hope you weren’t planning on heading home to Carann just yet, my young friend. We appear to have one more stop to make after all.”

///

Elsewhere in the Empire, at the heart of a highly secured military facility, a light began to flash on a control console, indicating a message had arrived. When an officer with the clearance to do so read it, the message proved to be short and direct. The project is compromised, it said. The laboratory has been destroyed. Expect company soon.