“Then this is a better plan, no? Guaranteed vengeful, righteous violence.”
The possibility of the imprisoned aliens slaughtering—or worse—the Erevna researchers held morbid appeal, and he enjoyed picturing the imagined carnage for a minute before leaning into the dash and sighing.
“You’re assuming they’ll fight back. Rise up. But no one does that, Cosime. No one but us.”
She sank down onto her heels wearing a pout. “All the anarchs do.”
“A few thousand among two and a half trillion. Most people, most creatures of any kind, aren’t like us. It never occurs to them to fight…I don’t think it even occurs to them that they ought to be free.”
“But—”
“Everyone inside this lab already chose not to fight. If they’d done otherwise, they wouldn’t be inside—they’d be dead back on their home planets. We open the doors to their cages, and the prisoners will simply cower in the corners waiting to be disciplined.”
She watched him studiously for several seconds, then adjusted one of the spiraire lines with the tip of a finger. “So, explosives, then?”
3
SOLUM
MILKY WAY SECTOR 1
* * *
THE PRAESIDIS PRIMOR CONSIDERED THE HORIZON and all that stretched from his feet to its penumbra. An endless city encompassed not merely his citadel and its surroundings but the entirety of the surface, for Solum was a city-planet in the most literal sense. Spires stretched into the clouds and beyond, and the span of their gleaming glass and metal paused only for craft parks floating aloft at perfectly spaced intervals.
A time had come, epochs past, when the other Dynasties were no longer content to share land with one another. One after another they departed the Anaden homeworld to establish independent domiciles on worlds of their own. All Dynasty progeny naturally remained welcome to visit whenever they wished, and many were always doing so.
But in the end, Praesidis alone called Solum home and Praesidis alone ruled over it. This was as it should be, because while all Dynasties were equal at the Directorate’s circle, Praesidis was the reason the Directorate existed. His had stood as the strongest since the Dynasties’ establishment.
Machim had his fleets and mighty weapons; Erevna had her knowledge and scientific pursuits; Antalla had his commercial riches, Diaplas her engineered monuments, Theriz his stores of resources and Idoni her perpetual bliss. But Praesidis more than any other ensured they all continued to have such things. Ensured the proper balance and order was maintained.
Praesidis was the diati’s chosen ally, companion and vessel, and it was only proper that the birthplace of the Anadens be his dominion.
He departed from the balcony and walked across the transparent floor, where beneath his feet a thousand stories of purposeful activity unfolded as a recursive hall of mirrors. When he reached the center of the open room, he created a dampening sphere around him and it all faded away, to be replaced with a visualization—further, a conscious awareness—of every living Praesidis descendant.
The Inquisitors radiated the most dominant presences, of course, and he assimilated each one’s location, purpose and current status. The more numerous Watchmen hovered a layer beneath. They were less nomadic by nature and typically held less unique, original information to provide. Beneath them swarmed billions of chaperons, guards, examiners and analysts.
Yet if he wished it, he could know the state of any individual asi with but an intentional thought directed at them. His presence in their minds manifested as little more than a tickle, for the access did not flow upward.
The prolonged absence of a single Inquisitor marred the integral like a hole punched through a wall. Aver ela-Praesidis passed beyond his perception during a routine investigation weeks ago and had yet to return.
Temporary vanishings were not unheard of. Though immortal and wielding a measure of power to rival any god, the Primor was still a corporeal creature. There were dimensions he could not sense while existing in the physical realm of Amaranthe. The vanishings inevitably resolved themselves when the individual, almost always an Inquisitor, returned to normal space upon having completed their mission.
But Aver had remained away for quite a long time now. The Primor studied the details of the assignment the Inquisitor was working: the apparent disappearance of the majority of a Tier II-D species shortly prior to the Cultivation of their system. Spacefaring in the most rudimentary sense, the species would not have possessed the capability to detect the pre-Cultivation monitoring and evaluation procedures, nor would they have had a way to know in advance the fate which awaited them.
Hence the investigation.
The mass disappearance of the species constituted a troubling event, but not an unprecedented one. Such sudden exoduses had occurred a few times over the millennia, but not so often he would characterize it as a trend.
Aver’s last update had been filed as he entered the stellar system in question. Then, nothing.
Inquisitors enjoyed a degree of freedom of action and decision-making rare among Anadens, much less among the other civilized species of Amaranthe. Such freedom was not granted lightly. Inquisitors were bred for it, with hundreds of generations of genetic manipulation directed at creating individuals unrivaled in deductive and inductive thinking, analysis and judgment. Detectives. Hunters. Assassins, when the situation called for it.
Aver would not have been expected to report in at each step of his investigation; such an act would have bordered on weakness. In exchange for their relative freedom, Inquisitors were expected to achieve results, period.
The Primor’s review of the irregularity served to increase his displeasure with it. Aver had in fact been gone for too long, and no reasonable explanation had been presented to justify the absence. What had happened to the man?
The entry alarm chimed. Because this review had taken place as a formality, and because he’d known he would need to take action before he took it, he’d called for Nyx this morning.
There existed only twelve elassons in the Praesidis Dynasty, all Inquisitors, and they each were his children as surely as if he’d spawned them. Which in the ways that mattered, he had.
He froze the sphere state, granted entry to his guest and met her halfway. His hands closed in front of his chest as hers did the same, and they bowed in unison. “Nyx, my dear. Thank you for coming.”
Her chin remained dipped for a breath after her spine straightened. “I am forever in your service, Primor.”
Fond greeting dispensed with, he revisited the sphere and retrieved the quantized record that represented the missing man—his past, his personal and professional history, his mission and everything else she may need to know to find him.
“Inquisitor Aver ela-Praesidis vanished on a mission too long ago. His consciousness did not transmit for regenesis, nor is it present in the integral now. He was new to the ela rank but proved worthy of the promotion in previous assignments. Complete his mission, learn what fate befell him and determine if there is an additional threat which needs to be addressed. If so, report it to me then address it.”
“It will be done, Primor.” She accepted the data, and its physicality vanished into her hand as she absorbed the knowledge. Nothing more needed to be said or imparted, so she bowed in farewell then turned and left.
4
MW SECTOR 23 ADMINISTRATION
MILKY WAY SECTOR 23
* * *
COSIME HEADED OFF TO locales unknown to acquire the necessary explosives from one of her suppliers. She had a proper job, of course, working for Vanierel at Liryns Cathedral on Palomar IV, as non-Anadens weren’t allowed to just cavort around the cosmos at will. But Vanierel was, if not quite an anarch, at a minimum sympathetic to the cause, and he overlooked her frequent absences.
Luckily, nothing so extreme as antimatter was needed for this mission. The detonation would occur inside an enclosed structure, and the lab’s edifice was like tissue compared to the goliath Phoenix Gatew
ay. A solid pack of average, ordinary ultra-dense high-powered explosives should suffice to get the job done. Also, though ruining the structure itself would be a nice bonus, the objective was the elimination of what and who resided inside. This included the prisoners—again, a mission of mercy.
Eren proceeded to MW Sector 23 Administration to set about obtaining a list of vessels approved for deliveries to Exobiology Research Lab #4 and their security authorization details.
The Administration center served as a clearinghouse for the entire sector. A Kyvern-run arm of the Directorate managed the labyrinthine nightmare of a bureaucracy that hovered over, in and around doing business here. Doing anything here. Doing anything anywhere, for the station was a clone of sixty-four other installations in the Milky Way alone.
Kyvern were bred to perform this function, thus he had to assume they found fulfillment, even pleasure, in accomplishing it day after dreary decade, but Eren was already restless and he’d hardly crossed the station’s outer shields.
Sector 23 Administration was business from end to beginning, with no revelry in sight on the cheerless station. A single lounge for employees did brisk but glum business on the uppermost piazza.
This was not a place where Idonis loitered—so he needed to look less like an Idoni and more like a Kyvern. The spoofed identity and credentials were in place, but now up went the hair into a tamed knot and out went his usual sueded corium attire in favor of a muted brown suit. His irises artificially dimmed to a dull amber, and a cybernetics routine lightened his skin tone several shades until it resembled the fairer skin dominant among Kyvern. He didn’t have to work hard to fake the permanent scowl most of them wore.
The first of many queues greeted him at the station entrance. Security.
He frowned—or he would have were he not currently doing so—as the length of the wait was surprising. Though bureaucratic, Kyvern were typically highly efficient at their tasks.
A glance toward the front of the jam revealed four Vigil units and a Watchman. Ah. So security was going to be notably tighter than usual, and they’d brought in non-Kyvern muscle.
He chuckled to himself at the possibility the increase in security was due to him, or rather due to his actions at the Phoenix Gateway. The flash of pride was quickly doused by annoyance at the fact his success had in turn made future successes for him and others that much more difficult, at least for a while. But now wasn’t the time to lessen the pressure on the Directorate; it was the time to increase it. Risks be damned.
He was three people from the front when a furor broke out on the other side of the entry checkpoint, off to the left.
“No! I didn’t do anything wrong! I wasn’t trying to steal!”
The Watchman left the checkpoint to go see to the disturbance, and Eren willed the queue to move faster. The front-line Vigil drone units folded when presented with impeccable if false credentials, but the Praesidis Watchman wouldn’t have been so easy to fool.
He stepped up to the checkpoint.
“Present Accepted credentials.”
The Watchman reached the shrieking Naraida woman, who had been cornered by two roving Vigil units.
Eren did as requested.
Her pleas rang loudly above the generalized din. “Please, sir, there must be a glitch with my account. I should have the funds—”
The Watchman used his diati to lift the woman into the air then slammed her face first to the floor. He motioned for the Vigil units to restrain her.
“Business?”
Eren kept his voice flat. Dulled. “Addition of a new cargo ship to an existing transport business registration.”
The drones extended spindly arms to lift the unconscious woman up. Her head lolled against her chest, and her pliant limbs caused her to sag low between the drones. Blood streamed down from her forehead, and her spiraire had been crushed. They should see to that soon, or she was liable to suffocate from a lack of nitrogen before they got her to a containment cell. Did they care?
“You are cleared to pass.”
Eren strode through the checkpoint without any gesture of thanks to the Vigil unit and kept his gaze straight ahead as he passed the drones dragging the woman away. The Watchman passed two meters behind him on his way to the checkpoint.
He stopped holding his breath.
Over the course of the next interminably long minutes he traversed endless levels full of endless hallways of offices, registries and certification departments, the sole variation being the length of the queues to access them. The interior displayed so little character he had to consult his map overlay several times to confirm his location and path forward.
The one oddity of note he encountered was an Efkam lighting a passage as it slipped and slid along the floor. How the blobs were able to move without leaving a trail of slime behind them was among the great mysteries of the universe. It warbled a greeting at him as it passed, but he ignored it, because he’d be expected to do so. The Efkam were surprisingly open, friendly creatures—but they were only tolerated by the Anadens. Not entertained.
He’d almost fallen asleep from boredom by the time he reached the Maintenance Hardware department, some two hundred levels and a thousand hallways from where he’d begun.
A Vigil unit blocked the entrance. It floated upward to leer menacingly over Eren. “This is a restricted area. Present authorization for your presence, return to the guest levels or be pacified.”
Someone needed to teach the machine a touch of nuance. He presented a small Reor slab. “Special authorization from Sector Oversight, originating outside of Administration management.”
The unit inserted the slab into its reader. Two seconds later it jerked and dropped to the floor as the virus on the slab shorted out its operating routines.
Eren maneuvered the bulky ball of metal into a dark corner by kicking it forward and around to the left. Once he made sure it wasn’t going to roll back out into the entry, he retrieved his slab, pulled on a glove and held his hand to the scanner gating entrance to the interior rooms.
The barrier thinned to allow him to pass, and he walked into the data vault. Time was ticking, and a surge of adrenaline assured he was now fully awake. He located the nearest access point and tapped into it.
The station’s data archives weren’t porous or weakly protected, but in recent years anarchs who weren’t him had begun to develop some brilliantly crafty hacking routines.
Zettabytes of data populated the system, and all but a few gigabytes of it were useless to him. He relied upon several dozen cross-referencing tags to lead him to the files he needed. Once he found them, he didn’t hang around and decide which vessel offered the best option; he simply copied the data onto a new Reor slab and backed out of the system. Then he hurried toward the door—
“Vigil unit H962 is down in Maintenance Hardware. Cause is undetermined. It could be either a malfunction or sabotage.”
“Watchman dispatched to your location.”
Eren pressed against the wall of the vault room and peeked around the corner. A guard stood over the unit Eren had disabled, doing what all persons like him did best—guarding it until someone possessing greater authority arrived.
The one thing that never, ever showed up on missions was good luck. Bad luck? All the godsdamn time.
He dug around in his kit for a piece of hardware he could spare and palmed a small power bridge stabilizer. His options for getting out of the data vault were limited. If he created a distraction, they would know someone had been here and flag the incident as malfeasance. Without a flag, however, the disabled Vigil unit would look like it had suffered a rudimentary malfunction. So maybe he should wait and hope the guard walked into another room long enough for him to sneak out.
But a Praesidis Watchman was on the way; no time to hope for good luck that never came anyway. He hurtled the bridge into the vault room. The loud clatter got the guard’s attention, and the man sped past Eren’s shadow into the vault.
Eren ran for t
he door, then the hallway, then the transit tube. He had twenty seconds at most to get off this level before someone spotted him.
He reached the tube and leapt inside the same instant the Watchman materialized at the other end of the hallway. “Halt!”
The tube shot upward. He’d been seen, but not scanned, so…he considered abandoning the disguise. But a description of a ‘male Kyvern in a brown suit’ described several thousand individuals on the station at the low end, which made it a better disguise than ‘baroque Idoni man with fiery hair and starburst eyes.’
So instead he caught his breath and mentally ran through the full list of his terrible options for reaching the docks, getting through security and escaping the station.
“Vigil Administration Security, halt!”
The Watchman—a quick peek over his shoulder confirmed it was the same one from the vault floor—emerged from a service tube behind Eren, apparently having taken some top-secret shortcut to the transport lobby. Multiple Vigil drones sped forward to block possible exits and aid the Watchman in apprehending his prey even as two guards rushed in.
Should have ditched the costume. To his right a crowd of people shrank away, eager to obey any commands the Watchman might direct their way. No hiding in the crowd until he could sneak away unnoticed.
To his left was a sleeping pod showroom. It would have a rear exit leading to a service corridor, which would lead to yet more corridors where he would be run to ground. A trap of his own making.
Ahead were the hangar bays and transport ships. But the entrance to the docks sat at the end of a long, open lobby perfect for shooting him in the back—or the front, since the fully staffed checkpoint gated the entrance.
He tightened his grasp on the Reor slab encoded with the transport ships’ data and prepared to fry it. If he got nulled, which it appeared he was about to, at least he could prevent Vigil from learning what information he’d stolen. He, or someone, could try again later.
Aurora Resonant: The Complete Collection (Amaranthe Collections Book 3) Page 4