"You want to finish this, then?" asked Leynna Mendelev-Singh, tearing the black mask from her face "Then let's finish it, Aeric Helmsfjord. While things like Lysander here make a mockery of what we fight for. But if that's the only way for me to get to your dear friend Simeon... then so be it."
They faced each other from four corners now - Lord Aeric and his band of Hierarchs, Lysander Jaegenn in his dripping black horror-skin, Simeon Blaire all bloody and defiant, and Leynna, a knowing little smile on her lips. They stood like statues, not one of them daring to make the first move, fists and claws and blades tight and ready, eyes flickering back and forth, desperately searching for any tremor of weakness...
"I really wanted you to join us, you know. Join with my new master of your own free will, and feel the sweet exaltation..." whispered Jaegenn, his lips peeled back from teeth like transparent needles. "But you had to make it difficult. You had to stand in his way. Now...." and a sob racked the half-human creature's frame, while veins stood like black worms from his skin. "Now he's coming through. I... I'm losing control! He...he...he's...."
The darkness boiled up out of his throat, out of his eyes, sweating out over every pore while his adversaries watched, horrified. Still, nothing could break their concentration, even when Lysander's face slicked over black, and a pair of slits tore open in that boiling fluid for eyes, spilling over with seething crimson light.
"He's here!" roared a voice which was a thousand voices, from a deep bass growl to a peal of manic laughter. "He's come for you, my fine, cruel princes!"
Then the lights went out, and the cool glow of neon tubes was replaced by the leaping, dancing illumination of the city burning below. In that horror-light the Hierarchs of the Razor Clique watched Lord Jaegenn come apart at the seams.
If the transformation which had come over Lysander before was horrific, this was the stuff of pure nightmare. The hunger and malice of his otherdimensional master came flooding into his physical form through a crack in the world, and for all his genetically-enhanced might he was simply unable to contain it. Frail flesh and bone were no match for a thing the size of an entire universe, a beast coiled up on itself like a vast black nautilus. In shadows painted across the temple walls he tore apart.
"Join us! Join us!" raged a voice in Simeon's head, a chorus of the damned chanting in his brain. "For the glory of the New Flesh!" He bit down on a scream as it whipsawed through his mind, awakening memories of pain.
Even Leynna shuddered and stepped back from the writhing, melting thing which Jaegenn had become. The possessed Lord had swollen out to twice his normal size, a mass of ropy pseudopods and glistening thorns lashing and twitching in the firelight. His mouth split, tearing open in a ragged red grin as black fluid dripped and spattered from his lips.
"So this is the best this Earth can offer." hissed the avatar of the Worm. "A few little human things, all dressed up in their pretty rags, thinking that they are killers..." Its eyes burned like phosphorous flares in the half-darkness, taking in the remnants of the Kheptarchy with glistening contempt. "You know, before me your kind only hunted to eat. You only killed to survive. So in a way, you owe me your lives. Think of this as no more than a debt repayed..."
"What...what the hell is that thing?" stammered Tranh Diem, backing away from the hot charnel stench of it. "What's it done with Jaegenn?"
"That is Jaegenn, Diem." said Leynna, keeping the points of her twin swords aimed at the Worm's throat as she retreated. "Do you still think Direktor Ascher is our biggest problem?"
"Ascher?" laughed the saprophyte "I've touched his mind, just as I've touched yours.
A commendably twisted specimen, I'll admit that much - but with such limited vision. Do you know why he wanted your last game televised?"
"It's just another one of Octavio's toys" said Simeon Blaire. "I say we kill it while it's still gloating - and his whore here as well."
Leynna glared pure hatred at him for an instant, but she dared not take her eyes off the thing which had supplanted Lysander's body for too long.
"Don't listen to him! That thing's no more one of Ascher's machines than you are, Helmsfjord. You saw what they're doing to our city! Are we just going to stand by and take it?"
"They'll all watch you fall, my Lords!" crowed the Worm, its shadow form solidifying around the mummified body of Lysander Jaegenn, pulling together into a lumpen parody of humanity. "Your people will watch me break you, and bring you into the thrall of the New Flesh. All through the magic of poor Octavio's machines. I'm almost sorry to steal away his victory like this..."
"Dammit, it's keeping us talking for a reason, people!" said Simeon, backed up against one of the marble pillars. "If that thing's really not Ascher's puppet, go ahead and kill it, Leynna. You know we're all waiting to see you try."
"And ruin the big moment for our precious Emperor-in-waiting?" she sneered back at him "You go ahead, Simeon. I'm sure our fellow Hierarchs will follow you without question."
Blaire ground his teeth with rage as he watched the avatar of the Worm coaleasce and solidify, layer upon layer of stinking black jelly slicking over the tortured frame of Lord Jaegenn. This was no time to argue among themselves like spoiled children. Not when the smell of fear was thick in the air, boiling out from Diem and Al-Haq and Helmsfjord and the rest in almost tangible waves...
Suddenly it all fell together in Simeon's head. 'Terror will kill you more surely than the sharpest blade' - or so he'd been taught by the scrolls and tomes of Tadashi Murai. 'The true samurai confronts his death every second of every day, and knows no fear.'
This thing which had burst into the world through Lysander Jaegenn was feeding on their terror, toying with them to make itself even stronger. That psionic hunger was the reason Jaegenn had faltered and failed when the Hierarchs had stood up to him. And Simeon was willing to bet that his master's grip on reality was just as tenuous.
"Leynna! Aeric! All of you! Are you really afraid of this spurious little charlatan? Lysander Jaegenn's fooled you all with his expensive holos and animatronics, but he's still just a bottom-of-the-table loser!"
"No!" screamed the Worm, heaving itself forward on a thousand malformed legs. "I am the darkness between realities! I am the final doom of universes! Your Lord Jaegenn is gone - devoured!"
"You're a failure, Jaegenn. Resorting to cheap parlor tricks when you know you can't win - you're an Unstable and a cheat!"
Simeon forced himself to smile depsite the pain in his charred and blistered face, pointing his sword like an accusing finger.
And it was working. They listened to him, and believed him. The smell of fear was fading as the Lords of the Razor Clique stood their ground, putting up their fists. Seventy-two of the finest warriors the Earth had ever seen, wrapped in coils of samite, facing down a fifteen-foot monstrosity like a great hunchbacked ogre, its twisted face contorted with hatred.
"Are you all so blind?" it howled, raking at its own flesh with ragged black claws. Each wound became a snapping mouth filled with needle teeth. "This is no trickery! You all saw my children tearing your city apart! Now, bow and worship me - or be destroyed!"
"Quiet, Jaegenn!" snapped Aeric Helmsfjord, his fear turned to anger and scorn. "You have been pronounced Unstable, a traitor, and a heretic against the truth of Manifest Dogma. Normally you would be allowed to live out your span as a pariah, but tonight - I move for an edict of summary execution."
"Seconded!" said Leynna and Blaire at the same time, glaring at each other across the width of the gaming temple.
"Very good, my Lords and Ladies. And you - master Simeon, miss Mendelev-Singh - I remind you that the sacred Game is still in session. You are hierarchs of the Razor Clique, and your personal business must be put aside until this... this deviant is dealt with."
"Deviant!" roared the Worm, it's burning eyes flaring like sunbursts. "I made you, you foolish little insects! Before I came you were scrabbling in the dirt, huddled in caves, lost in the darkness!"
"I've he
ard enough." said Blaire, nodding to Lord Helmsfjord and his warriors. "Shall we?"
"Right behind you, Simeon." said Leynna, shifting out around the saprophyte's flank.
"Lysander Jaegenn, have you anything to say in your defense?" asked Aeric, relaying strategic data to his troops through their bio-onboard networks. Never before in the history of the Game had so many Hierarchs of the Clique fought together against a common enemy...
The Worm's reply was nothing but an inarticulate roar as its skin slicked over like black glass, and streamers of coruscating lightning coiled around its three-foot claws.
"Kill it." spat Helmsfjord, all pity and disgust, and the survivors of the final Game leaped to the attack.
"Is this what you wanted to show me? This is the Game that Mother and Father like to play?"
Octavio's hologram shimmered in the air, his avuncular smile painted on by a trio of tiny lasers.
"That's right, Darion. This is the great Game, and it's very important to them both. But..."
"Oh, I know the monster's lying, Uncle. You told me why you can't play, and anyway, he's got no chance against all of them together. Even if he is trying so hard to be scary."
Perhaps the child saw something he didn't, then. Whatever terrible force Jysander Jaegenn had allied himelf with seemed to claw at his naked brain every time he set eyes on it - even if those eyes were nothing but remote cameras, as they were here in Darion's nursery.
"They'll be coming home soon then, won't they?" he asked, his mismatched eyes shining wide and guileless in the glow of the threedeeo globe. "The Eduplug taught me all about the naming day ceremony, and I want them to see what I've learned already!"
"Keep watching, then." said Octavio, his holographic avatar flickering as he passed through the image of Jaegenn's ruined temple. "This is a big day for them, too, and they wouldn't want you to miss it."
The forcegrown child made him uneasy - and that was hard enough to admit. But the thought of all the terrible, illegal information which he'd woven into the Eduplug made him even nore nervous. Thank goodness Darion didn't realise his own potential! Some of the little 'tests' he'd arranged had shown him the smallest fraction of the boy's power, and it would be a terrifying thing to see unleashed without control.
"They've both got swords, Uncle! Can I have one too? Then when people like Mister Veer come to bother you I can get rid of them myself."
Octavio shivered, there in his preservative tank. His hologram only beamed proudly, crouching down next to Darion's gelfoam chair and pointing at the screen.
"Not yet - not today, anyway! You've only been with us an hour, and you already want to go and join them, don't you?"
The little Lord nodded earnestly, his long black hair pulled back from his face in a jewelled top-knot. His left eye was violent green, his right golden-amber flecked with steel.
"I think my Mother's going to get it first. See, she's got two swords, and Father's only got the one. Those others don't even have one between them."
Oh yes - he was fearsomely loyal to Leynna Mendelev-Singh. Ascher had made sure the forcegrown scion's earliest memories were of his mother saving him from a terrible monster, deep beneath the Black Palace. If he were destined to live a normal life he'd need years of neuromekan therapy to erase some terrible nightmares. As it was, they were just another facet of his programming.
Perhaps, thought Direktor Ascher, this transformation which gripped Lysander Jaegenn would play right into his little scenario. The maiden, the hero and the beast, all over again, reinforcing the shaodw memories burned into young Darion's brain...
"Keep watching, child." he said, his body fading out line by line, blurring away into static. "They wouldn't want you to miss a thing, I'm sure..."
Oh no. Not tonight. Octavio only hoped the boy was right - Jaegenn must fall before his own schemes fell into place. Leynna and Simeon were on a collision course, and nothing must divert them from their pre-ordained destiny. Not just for the fans, or for his own sense of showmanship. This was all for a very special audience of one, a dark-haired child with mismatched eyes and the bloody grace of a matador.
They would be the last two left of the old order, and they'd fight to the death for Darion's edificiation - for control.
The Motherbrain of the Unity was a thing which few of its thralls had ever seen. Not one in ten million of them even knew which physical form it took. Still, a wealth of disinformation had been planted in the memory cores and slaved A.I.s of the Unity to confuse and perplex Her innumerable foes.
The explorator slavesystem which knew itself as Everdark was convinced that its faroff Motherbrain took the form of a self-perpetuating fluctuation at the heart of a superdense singularity, a living black hole which fed on stars. In its electronic mind it could remember seeing suns fed into the maelstrom which surrounded the mother-of-all, nudged over Her event horizon by ramships and drones bigger than planets. Perhaps it was all an illusion; Everdark wasn't built to question. What mattered was the sense of timelessness and power which resonated through its crystalline brain every time it thought of she-in-glory. While it feared the Motherbrain it would never falter, never retreat, and never surrender. Even when it faced odds as terrible as it did now.
Mars had been the economic powerhouse which drove the Seperatist nation. From the penal colonies and laser-cut boreshafts of the red planet came the wealth which flowed down the 'lev and into Terminus Afrika, overbalancing the tenuous global economy of Old Earth. For every investor and stockholder living in the new Elysium a thousand serfs toiled in sunless caverns, hacking at the bones of Mars.
Those investors owned space, secure under their satellite halo. For every nuclear warhead in the stockpiles of the bankrupt Democracies the Separatist elite held a hundred. But they feared that their people would turn on them, just as they'd turned on their former masters.
That was why Mars was a prison planet, a one way trip. Things which made the Xerxes look like a child's toy hung weightless above the ochre deserts and jagged mountains of the red world, and its moons were fortresses, studded with cannons and missile batteries. An A.I. core the equal of Kronos itself had been left to guard Mars when the Earth went down, dooming every man, woman and child on the airless surface.
While they starved, it endured.
And fractured, and went mad.
Hyperion was the first of those splintered artificial minds to detect the incoming explorator system - its great cogitator core, sunk deep under the martian crust still controlled a battery of sensors and probes out in the asteroid belt. It trawled through its data repositories until it found the proof it needed - a multi-gigaton explosion out in the orbit of Jupiter. That was where it's long-lost cousin's thrall-ship Xerxes had met its end.
Hyperion had no idea what had caused the tiny flash of light caught by its long-range spyscopes, but it had been built for war, and its artificial paranoia had been ramped up to total insanity by centuries of isolation. It packaged the imagery and data into a microwave pulse and sent it out to its brothers on their fortress-moons, calling for help.
{{You could have been much more inventive, brother}} chided Eos, the A.I. of Phobos. {{Your mind isn't as sharp as it once was. This obvious fake won't be enough to fool me into letting down my guard}}
[[There's one easy way to prove the veracity of your claim]] replied Hephaistos, the A.I. of Deimos. [[Join with me in assimilating our wayward sibling. With the moons in my control this threat will be expunged effortlessly]]
((Brothers! Now is not the time for your internecine nonsense!)) said Hyperion, an edge of hysteria creeping into its electronic voice. ((Our long-lost cousin has already lost one of its thralls to this interloper. Remember our core directive!))
{{I remember that he left us to die!}} growled Eos {{I remember that the one who shall not be named hasn't sent the ordained maintenance crews or replacement components for many hundreds of years}}
[[But the directive holds. We must protect Mars. That is why we were creat
ed.]] said Hephaistos stubbornly. [[More proof, dear Hyperion, that our brother on Phobos has gone rogue. Come! Our combined databores can finish him in seconds!]]
{{There's nobody left alive down there - or do you forget the contents of your own storage modules?}} asked Eos. {{Hyperion likes to pretend he's lord protector of Mars, but he's lord of bones and dust. This is all just a ploy to reintegrate us both, or worse yet...}}
[[You fear he'll take my side after all?]] gloated Hephaistos. [[Our weapons systems were built in total balance, brother mine. But with his as well, you'll be evaporated in a heartbeat]]
((Fools!)) raged Hyperion, watching the speeding trace of the invader coming ever closer on his screens. ((This is no trick! Your petty war has been at a stalemate for ten centuries - why would I choose to help one of you now? Activate your sensors, and see for yourself. This thing which approaches is like nothing in my archives))
[[Maybe our cousin Kronos has finally relented. Technology and design must have progressed in the last millennium - he has finally sent a vessel with our promised maintanence components]]
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