"Why would you think that?"
"Come on," Kai said, putting out her hands in a persuasive gesture. "He's all but locked you up in this place for solar cycles. Yet he accepted me, Sarvill, and Raksamat into his institute. And Raksamat's an Engineer initiate now. You, you're still..."
Jace.blek's voice quieted. "Be careful what you say. This is my nest."
"It's your prison."
"Maybe. It is sufficient for my purposes, however. And for the most part, I'm my own prison guard."
"You've become complacent here."
"Complacency is a form of happiness. Isn't that what you New Terrans are all about? Being happy."
She studied the fungus oozing on the wall and watched the tiny insects crawling among strands of goop. Jace.blek didn't know her well, but he knew her well enough to detect the transparent attempt at manipulating him. There had to be a better strategy.
"You were right about the black goo," she said, running her fingers through her hair. "The story Phoenix told me wasn't the truth."
"You seem very certain."
"I am. Phoenix told me that you wanted to know everything. That was your motivation upon entering his Engineer institute."
"Yes. That's accurate."
With her godweb, Kai didn't even have to reach out to touch the bugs. Yet she dared not bother them with smart dust. "Would you like to know why you can never be an Engineer?"
"I already know that. The black goo," he hissed.
"Wrong." She folded her arms over her chest. "Didn't you ever suspect that the sapient of truth must've told a few lies?"
Phoenix was well aware of the possibility she might tell Jace.blek, but he'd trusted her not to. You'll never be able to kill me. She smiled in challenge.
She invited the mushroom boy to a replay sim of her conversation with Phoenix. As soon as he heard the truth about why he could never be an Engineer—that Phoenix removed his Engineer abilities—Jace.blek exited the sim.
Kai closed it, eager to see his reaction given that Buejentoe felt anger the same as New Terrans.
A popping noise sprang up around her. She looked to see the fungus walls steaming. Shrieks sounded.
The insects raced around, contorting and spinning in desperation. One by one, they exploded in little bursts of brown smoke. Kai tensed. Even her godweb couldn't save her if he wanted to kill her with his base's godweb.
Seconds later, the shrieking and popping ended.
Jace.blek only said one thing to her. "If I find out this is a trick, I will utterly destroy you."
And if you find out this is the truth?
His body melted into the fungus. She took that as a good sign. Even geniuses needed time to process dark truths.
She checked her feed and discovered a construct invite from Raksamat. He owed her nothing. Phoenix had known about her breaker link and removed that. She couldn't even extort him, so it was exceedingly odd that he would message her.
She accepted and found Raksamat standing in the middle of miles and miles of barren, jagged rock and steaming pools of boiling chemicals under a bright sun. Rocks like the claws of a giant beast belched thick black smoke into an otherwise clear green sky.
Raksamat said.
"I don't give a flying fuck," Kai said. "Now why are we talking?"
"Don't you fucking interrupt me or tell me what I should give a flying fuck about. But since you seem like you had a good reason for it, you've got ten words in Basic."
"That's eight."
"That's nine."
"And that's ten. Now shut the fuck up and listen. I'm back in Jace.blek's nest if Phoenix didn't tell you. Jace.blek is currently dealing with a revelation from his past. I think there's a very good chance he'll want to retaliate against his old master."
That unsettled her. How damn powerful was this Phoenix? And what game was he playing by allowing Raksamat to speak with her? She paused to reflect on that, and it hit her. This was a warning. A way to dispel any hopes of assaulting his institute.
Now she understood. Phoenix wouldn't strike the Starbleeders down remotely. Not before they'd attacked. He'd been raised a New Terran, so his morality reflected that. The Starbleeders also had Engineer-soldiers. He likely bore too much guilt from the Jace.blek incident to harm them.
She'd assumed that Phoenix could teleport the location of his institute. But that monolith was rooted in Burkos. Perhaps that was the source of his power then.
In that sense, he was vulnerable, but she knew he must've had other defensive tricks. Defensive tricks that Starbleeder Engineer-soldiers would be susceptible to? Maybe not. If he tried to alter the reality around him so as to give himself an advantage, they might simply reset that. She'd heard once that altering reality was harder for Engineers than resetting it back to its normal state.
She stared past him to the boiling pools dotting the landscape. Raksamat was one hundred and seventy-two solar cycles old. If Raksamat was right that would mean the Engineer had existed before Phoenix.
"Who?" she said.
She nodded, remembering seeing that one around the institute. Raksamat must've been mistaken or trying to trick her. "Thanks for the heads up. It changes nothing. You still want the Starbleeders to pay, don't you?"
As she waited for his response, she connected to the InfiNet on her nexus. No official archives on the Engineers existed, but there were plenty of myths and rumors. Some slightly more credible than others. She pulled one up and parsed for a compilation of the known Engineers besides Astro Phoenix.
Etron-harishka'mobo's bio appeared, and she felt her chest hollow. He'd lived for five hundred solar cycles, recruiting the unfortunate aliens of the universe into roles of science and technology. No information on his current whereabouts existed. This couldn't be correct.
She searched through the unofficial records and discovered an Engineer profile that read: Official name: Unknown. Alleged to go by Ashiban in Basic. Official species: Unknown. Suspected to be an insectoid species. Status: Dead.
"Fuck." She tried to wrap her head around this incongruity.
This didn't make sense. And she didn't have the time to think it through anyway. Instead, she compiled all her knowledge of Phoenix's institute. All in a way that its strengths and weaknesses could be easily analyzed.
She countered with a grin. "It's not up to me. It's up to Jace.blek. Why don't you ask Phoenix about their history? Then you'll know whether the mushroom boy is going to stay loyal or not."
Chapter 42
FELIK
"I thought we were trying to avoid a tribunal," Felik said.
"It's clear that Blemu intends on making it as difficult for us as possible. A tribunal will at least keep things predictable," Minerva said. "In this case, I think we can limit your punishment to fines."
That was better than giving up his life. Unless those fines ended up putting him into debt. Then the Union Alpha government would be able to claim his core.
"What about the contents of the code?" Felik asked. "Why wouldn't he tell us?"
"Most likely it's something illicit. A porn sim. A dreamer. Coded for an Anunnaki visor."
"Can we blackmail them?"
; "Given their connections to Oberon that would be a dead end."
Several hours passed without a word between Felik and Juliard. But he'd watched her, wishing she would feel better as she paced beside the pond. Sometimes, she would lay flat on the grass and stare up at the chamber's fake sun hologram. He thought it best to let her reacquire her grasp on reality slowly, on her own.
"Xerix has gotten involved in your tribunal," Minerva notified him. "He's decided to allow Anunnaki justice in this case. He wants us to pay the value of the source code Blemu lost. It's to be treated as debt until you do."
"The tribunal is supposed to be objective," he protested.
"It's a new government. Laws and precedents are still being established."
"How screwed does that leave me?"
"You can't afford it now, of course. And you've got one week to pay."
Approximately eight sols. He'd have to sell his Nassatar to earn enough karma bits in that time. Fortunately, karma bits from the Union Omega had carried over to this empire.
Movement in his periphery drew his eyes to Juliard by the oak tree. She got to her feet, composed herself and approached him. The sight made him feel like the gravity had been cut in half.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
She looked to Minerva. "Tell whoever is running the tribunal that Felik pays nothing."
The protocol looked to the captain. "How exactly do we enforce that?" Felik asked, energized by his XO's new volition.
"Because if they take your life, I'll never give them access to the Nisto Cloud brains."
Juliard must've been feeling better, and his relief from that made him want to cheer. "Will that work?"
"It might," from Minerva.
"Tell Xerix."
Eight minutes later, she received a message from the Union Alpha's Chief Navigator. "Xerix has sent a counter-proposal," she said. "You attempt the Ascendi's Trial."
He did a quick archive search of the Ascendi's Trial. Centuries ago, when the Anunnaki had invaded and occupied Old Terra, humanity spent decades in a dark age. The Anunnaki had offered numerous incentives for cooperation and opportunities to obtain survival resources. One of those was the Ascendi's Trial. Human fighters competed in combat with each other for the Ascendi and other spectators' entertainment. The winner earned supplies for their village.
Felik frowned. "Why would we accept this? Juliard's got the leverage here."
"Because if you succeed, Oberon will free you of any service to the Union Alpha. He'll separate you from his breaker."
"And if I fail, I lose my core or something like that."
If he chose not to accept, he figured that Oberon could simply activate his breaker. The Union Alpha's StarMaster wanted him dead. By doing it this way, he at least appeared to be fair. Most likely, he'd publicize the news in a way that would win him a lot of karma bits.
"I don't have a choice. Except that I don't know how I'm supposed to fight Blemu. I've watched a lot of the cosmic combat arenas, but I'm not a fighter..."
"That's—"
Juliard cut off Minerva. "You don't understand the purpose of the Ascendi's Trial. It was to demean humans and reduce them to nothing more than rats scrambling to appease their alien overseers. You're no rat, Felik. You're a scion and a captain. I don't know who I am, I don't know what I am, but I know who the woman named Juliard was. A mecha pilot and a pretty good one. But Steeger was the best. Let's see if she still is."
Her new resolve was infectious and suddenly Felik felt optimistic about the situation. And yet his prior experience had taught him caution. No more naive hope in prizes that were not promised.
"Make no mistake, this is a gamble," he said quietly.
"You should be happy then."
"I just want to make sure you know what you're getting us into."
Juliard smiled. "What I'm getting you into."
"She's right," Minerva said. "As I understand it, you're the one that would lose your freedom. There's nothing in the data node proposal about punishing her."
"Good to know. Do me a favor and make it official then. We accept the Ascendi's Trial."
It was a hell of a gamble. Maybe his last.
Chapter 43
FELIK
"My neural virus has gotten worse. We're going to try an experimental procedure. If it works, I'll be free of it forever. If it fails..."
"What happens?" Brody asked, looking crestfallen.
Felik sighed, fairly certain his brother was smart enough to know. "When you're a starkeeper, maybe you'll be able to get funding for research into fixing neural viruses." One sol, Brody would know the truth. He might even be a part of Oberon's future schemes.
"What are your chances?"
Felik stared hard at the dice in his hand, wondering if that's all his life was now. A game of chance. "Sometimes it's more than chance. It's the quality of the specialist, the equipment used, the unknowns about the virus itself. There are too many factors to give an accurate judgment even with a linter."
He was lying. He had run a linter, and it pegged Juliard's chances of success at forty-three percent.
Brody nodded slowly, giving a hopeful smile. "How about one more game of Meme Wars?"
"Sure."
Brody won in less than ten minutes. Then he hugged him and returned to his studies.
Felik couldn't bring himself to contact the other scions. There was nothing to say to them. It was his last great moment to call attention to himself, and he didn't want to.
It would've been strange, forced. He'd seen Selek at the funeral. That was enough. As for friends, well, Landi had proven himself a traitor. He'd already sent out a generic update to the Guardian Mind, most of whom had made the transfer over to the Union Alpha. Let the Union Omega build that back up from scratch.
He invited Kridmar to his ship and brought him up to speed.
"I can't understand why you waited until the last minute," Kridmar said, lying on the grass, sniveling. A vestigial habit of his species. Sitting down cross-legged next to him, Felik met his weasel-like gaze and stroked his back.
He didn't have a good answer to that. Kridmar rested his head over Felik's leg and filled in the blank. "You don't have to say, I only wondered with everything going on."
"I should've told you," Felik said, scratching his ears. "I guess your species just has a stronger social bond than New Terrans. I mean, we were social creatures once, but we lost that a little over the recent centuries."
"You put more faith in your gambling than in New Terrans."
"Yeah, I do." Felik laughed softly. "Sometimes, though, New Terran friends don't tell each other things they should. A little discretion goes a long way. I guess we're afraid of being judged by each other."
There would be no tribunal to judge him now. Objectivity had abandoned him. That left only gambling. His passion now the possible ending of his life.
"Good luck," Kridmar said.
"Let's hope the universe truly does have a sense of karma," Felik said. Then again, it was hard to imagine that alien justice would so easily mesh with his desires.
Kridmar shimmered out. Juliard replaced him. "How are you doing?"
"I think I'm as mentally ready as I'll ever be," Felik said, glancing off. "What about you?" At first her idea had sounded fantastic given the circumstances. But now that he'd had time to think about it, anxiety was eclipsing his initial hope.
"This is going to sound strange, but I feel like this is what I need to contain my emotions. A distraction from everything going on in my head, you know? This whole thing just feels like a way to get past what Steeger did to me."
She struck him as falsely confident. He forced himself to smile reassuringly, so he didn't reveal his concern. She obviously wasn't in the best mental state to judge the situation, but they couldn't turn back now. All he could do was try to support her.
"Thank you for this," he said. "After everything you've been through, I would never have asked you to do this for me."
"Maybe I'm not doing it for you. Steeger and I aren't exactly friends."
"I know, but reality is what it is, and you're still giving me a hope I didn't have before."
"Everyone deserves hope." She put her hands in her pockets with a look that said, You'll never be a better sapient than you are now, but it's good enough. At least Felik saw it as that. "And you're not as much of a spoiled scion brat as I first thought. So maybe you even deserve to come out of this okay."
"Since we're on the topic of giving me hope, how are you planning to beat her?" Even if his life weren't on the line, the match-up between his XO and Steeger would've intrigued him. It wasn't quite the equal match-up he enjoyed from the cosmic arenas, but both were highly skilled pilots, both were veterans, both would be wielding powerful mechas. He was anticipating that Juliard's motivation would even out the advantages Steeger brought with her. Because she hadn't just learned that her own daughter had died so she could live. She had been reminded of a horrible betrayal by a man she'd once loved.
"I saw some holes in Steeger's combat style during the Wraith battle. And there's been a lot more analysis written over the decades about her combat methods than me. She only has archival data on my fighting. Plus she's probably slacked off lately thanks to combat scripts. But there won't be any of those in this battle."
Felik wilted. It had all sounded inspiring until that last part. "But the Nassatar's got the best."
"And Steeger knows all about them."
She'd thought this through more than him. He cleared his throat. "Is there anything you need from me?"
"Some time to run another sim," she said. She'd been running practices off and on the last few hours as a warm-up.
He nodded. "Go for it."
That gave him just enough time for one final good-bye. He went to see Dr. Ostek. In a fancy palace room construct, he treated her to a meal of some of the most expensive AR tastes he could find on the Hub. Fresh Xemagna "trout," doused in Buejentoe truffle oil, spiced Onmirz larvae stuffed with Gliese beef soaked in million solar cycle old manna, and honeyed Elder One cephalopod steak topped with sparkling locini eggs.
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