To Walk the Constellations Pt. 02

The hard lab had changed a great deal in the days. The Quantum Forge's body had unfolded from the perfect cube to a broad, flattened plane of black material with several extruded consoles and machines that were all glowing a different, searingly vibrant color. Long distance operators -- mechanical hands that were operated as simply as possible by remote control -- were at each console, flicking switches and adjusting dials while labtechs and engineers observed from the catwalk, muttering to one another. Praetor Theodosius was observing all of this with a great big steaming cup of kaff in his hands.

"What did you want me for, Theo?" Drak snarled as he walked forward, feeling sleep-drunk, the cold claws of his formless nightmare -- a nightmare of impossibly tight corridors and blood starved brain cells, of tumbling vastness and claustrophobic tightness -- still wrapped around his throat.

"The Quantum Forge is working exactly as anticipated. We've completely topped off our Q-bit reservoirs and are filling makeshifts -- Ho says that within the hour, we shall have the informational capacity to go on to stage two of the Forge's operations. But we need a test subject." His eyes gleamed. "I believe that you, Lord Drak, deserve the honor."

Drak remained perfectly still. "The...honor?"

"Oh, Lord Drak!" Ho's voice rang out. The engineer and programmer-archaeologist strode forward, holding a chunk of comptech in his hands, his eyes glazed with an excited fugue, like he hadn't slept and hadn't wanted to sleep for some time. "You're here, good! Good! So, do...yes, you..." He laughed, nervously. "The Praetor has told you, we need a test subject, correct?" He paused, and at Drak's nod, he continued. "You see, the Forge is working perfectly. I have no bloody idea how it is working -- this is beyond spooky action at a distance and onto outright magic." He chuckled, then stepped to the catwalk.

"All quantum bits, Q-bits, are created as entangled pairs. You can manipulate one to manipulate the other," Ho said, holding up his hands, then moving them apart and wiggling his fingers in counterpoint. "That is how the Hegemony sends its messages without a courier ship -- we make literal gigatons of Q-bits and ship them out with the industrial freight."

Drak sighed. "I am aware of how Q-bits function, Engineer."

"Right, right, this is where things get fascinating," Ho said, his voice still punch drunk. "The Forge has the ability to take a single Q-bit and use the interconnections to create new bits at either end of the entanglement spectrum." He beamed. "It's, in effect, able to create infinite bits between locations. Combining that with a river of mana, I believe we can regain one of the lost miracles: Farcasting."

Drak actually recoiled at that. His cape snarled around him and he grabbed onto the edge of the catwalk. "Are you insane?" He asked. "You want to disassemble my body with nanites, then send that data to Eudemonia and then rebuild me there?" He looked at Theodosius and saw the cruel gleam in the Praetor's eyes.

"You have the best chance of providing the data we need to make sure that the system functions properly with our comptech," Ho said. "Your sorcery will ensure the system will work. And we can monitor that and retrogram it to function without your presence. Then the Hegemony will have instant logistic support in any area it has both a Q-bit reservoir and a river of mana."

Drak's hand, still tight around the catwalk, clenched even harder. They want me to get ripped apart, atom by atom, and flung back to Eudemonia. They want me to...get off this stinking, cloying ship, and return to my only friends, to Adoran, in a single instant? They want me to escape the year or more of spending my life with the Praetor's sneer? They...

His hand unclenched. "It would be my honor," he said.

Praetor Theodosius' smile became ever so slightly forced. As if he realized that in their incredibly petty game, he had made a serious misstep. The next two hours passed in a blur of calibrations and examinations, pre-staged tests, quantum communications with the distant emitters at Eudemonia, and finally, the reconfiguration of the ship's primary river of mana. That took only a few minutes of meditative calm, where Drak interfaced with the bulky, bulbous, almost buglike shape of the river. The mana within its churning guts had been formatted to produce food and water for so long, they responded only sluggishly to his call to process more complex material.

Like myself, he thought with a wry smirk.

After the final check was made and the Forge and the river were combined properly, Drak stepped onto the platform that he had formatted out of the river's mouth. It was a simple thing -- a ring of solid metal that could extend a thin bubble of impermeable emission plastic to provide the electromechanical energy that the nanites would need while operating outside of the river's furnace-like bully. He rolled his shoulders and felt a moment of twisted gratitude towards his mask.

It meant he didn't have to hide the nervousness on his face as the nanites swept forward. He didn't see them at first -- but the air around him grew increasingly fuzzy and out of focus. The air grew thicker and thicker and thicker, the fuzz turning into a gray patina, then a thick gray slime. It frothed over his body, dripped along his coat, and he swore he could feel it crawling on his skin. The weight was still impossible for anything but finely tuned systems to measure -- far beyond the simple feedback of his body. But his brain still imagined it.

And then there was a fleeting moment of pain. A flash of black. A moment of limbo.

And he staggered forward, gasping. Heat roiled off his naked body, his tail and his ears twitching as he fell onto his knees. His eyes were focused on the sweet of a matte black floor, and he heard a voice crying out. "It worked! Yaaahhhhssss!"

"Thale!"

And before he knew it, he was on his feet, dangled off the ground really, his body being compacted against the broad chest of Prince Adoran Adams of Elthas. Thale's cheek mashed up against his pecs and he felt even skinnier and twiggier than he normally did, while Adoran began to swing him left and right, left and right. "Hah!" Adoran set Thale down. "God...they're going to need to refine that system..." He made a face. "It's a bloody shame what it did to your hair..."

"My hair?" Thale blinked. He felt some strength returning to his legs. Panic strength. He grabbed at his head and looked around for a mirror. Fortunately, the matte black, trapazodial room of the quantum communication chambers in the Temple were more than up to the task of showing him his completely shaved head, hairless ears, hairless tail, and utter lack of eyebrows. "Auuuuuuuuuuugh!" Thale squalled.

"You're still cute," Adoran said.

"No, no, he's not," Qauh said, leaning around the quantum communicator's bulk.

"Quah...we have to be supportive," Adoran hissed.

"Ugh..." Thale put his palms to his face. "You know what?" He let himself fall backwards and forced Adoran to spring forward to catch him. Thale grinned, letting his muscles relax and his whole body go boneless. "Fuck it. Still worth it."

"You say that until you hear the bad news," Quah said, cheerfully as she walked around to stand before him. She was, like most girls taken chosen to be Liminal Knights and trained by the Hegemony, lithe and athletic. But there had been major changes in the year since Thale had seen her in person. For one, she had dyed her hair silver. For another, she had grown it down to her ankles. For a third thing, she had dyed her skin black, giving her a striking midnight shadow look, which suited her flowing motions and her bright, playful eyes. But her hair drew Thale's eyes -- it writhed and wriggled like a nest of snakes. It was almost hypnotic.

"What's the bad news?" Thale asked as Adoran lifted him up a bit more.

Quah shrugged and her hair moved in the same motion -- lifting upwards, like it was on strings, before falling back to her shoulders. "Lord Vorsoth wants to talk to you. Right now."

Thale sighed. "Where's my mask?"

"Uh, it didn't come through," Adoran said, quietly.

Thale sighed even louder.

"I'll delay him," Adoran said, cheerfully -- like it was the easiest thing in the world to tell the Supreme Lord of the Hegemonic Penitents to simply wait for a report. "You get our grumpy kitty presentable, huh?" He lifted Thale up by his arms and tilted Thale from side to side.

"I resent this immensely," Thale muttered.

***

Thale slipped the newly fabricated mask over his face and felt it extend, click, and snap into position, while Quah finished rubbing her palms together and looking smug. "So," she said. "The nanites I've rubbed on your scalp should be repairing your hair -- reconstructing it from available raw material, speeding up the growth process from the cells. You should be nice and fuckable by the time you and Adoran are back in the barracks."

Thale snapped his head around to glare at her through the mask.

"What?" Quah asked, shrugging. "We all know you do it. It's not a big barracks."

Thale sighed -- and settled his shoulders. He centered his mind. He was Lord Drak right now. He strode away from Quah, lifting his left hand to gesture to her over his shoulder. Quah waved after him as he emerged from the barracks center of the Temple and onto the broad walkway that spanned the outer edge of the pyramidal superstructure. Like a set of interlocking triangles, the Temple and its walkways dominated the endless skyline of Eudemonia. The planet was bigger than the Terran average, but the metal light core and crust had left the planet with a gravity only a tiny fraction higher than Stumble's, or ship-standard gravity for the Hegemony fleet. This meant that the oppressive feeling on Drak's shoulders was mostly in his imagination.

The change in diameter combined with the sprawling ubercity that made up twenty percent of the planetary surface to create a skyline that was impressive as it was desolate. Endless row upon row upon row of sprawling skyscrapers, interlocking walk-tubes, shimmering rivers of a-grav traffic. The sky twinkled with the artificial borealis created by the station-teathers that were planted in the geostationary orbits around Eudemonia, working to counteract the scoring effects of solar wind on the planetary atmosphere -- a wind that was unchecked by any magnetosphere.

Those stations were a testament to the thousand years of Hegemonic dominion and the singular focus of its leaders. Eudemonia had been nothing but a former industrial depot ruled by scavenger warlords, desperately seeking to prolong their lives in the face of the creeping end of their world. Only when Haram Nebuchadnezzar, later to be crowned Emperor Daniel Haram Nebuchadnezzar I, strode out of the strife and chaos with a threshold blade in hand and prophecy on his tongue had the Hegemony begun to take shape.

The long walk finished with Drak coming to the great ramp that led from the second level of the Temple to the first, where a vast clear capstone to the pyramid was set in place. Carved from a chunk of diamond offered as tribute six hundred years before -- that diamond itself having been a castoff from some terrible cosmic fury in the system of Fomalhaut II -- the capstone was layered with quantum-dot projectors, allowing them to serve both as infallible cameras and the most breathtakingly complex comptech interface in the Chain. Stepping through the doors, Drak felt the comforting wash of the comptech around him -- the feeling was like being bathed in light. Like being in his dream sanctum.

It was so intense that he almost expected to see Venn, waiting for him.

Instead, he saw the Supreme Lord and his inquisitors. Vorsoth loved to claim that he was more Machine than man -- the intelligence augmentation threaded through his scalp and affixed to his temples gave him the look of a frilled raptor, with coolant fluids shifting in color and shade as waste heat produced by his implants were moderated. He went without a shirt or cape, showing off sculpted muscle that was threaded through with synthsteel plating and Blood 5.01a -- the most advanced nanite replacement for the human baseline that could be retrieved from the caches. He wore leggings that bloomed outwards around his hips, but grew taut around his waist and his knees, leaving his metal studded shins and his fiercely curled black shoes free for all to see. His threshold blade had been formatted into a massive claymore and rested against his solidly built throne. Flanking him were the inquisitors -- each a Liminal Knight who had served the Hegemony to distinction.

There was Levant. Gidion Truescape. Frank the Elder. Each one uniquely crafted by their trials -- clad in armor of their own design, their blades formatted in their own guises. Frank was caressing his wickedly serrated saw with a single scarred thumb, but the others remained perfectly still, waiting for Supreme Lord Vorsoth to speak first.

And Vorsoth waited for Drak to kneel.

Drak fell to one knee and bowed his head. "Supreme Lord Vorsoth," he said, his voice soft. "I have returned to report on the quest for the Quantum Forge."

Vorsoth inclined his head. "It clearly functions, Drak," he said. Without moving a finger, flicking an eye, or even twitching his head, he caused the projectors to flare to life. They showed a holographic recreation of gun-cam footage. A skinny girl, her face blurred out and invisible, stood poised on a wall made of scrap metal and bits of brick. The crosshairs on the gunsight were centered on the wall to the left of her foot and her arms were spread. Even with the blurring, her fear and shock were clear on the still image.

Drak knew it.

It was the image of the girl -- the untrained Liminal Knight from Stumble. His heart clenched and he ducked his head forward further. "Yes, her," he said. "She was potential Liminal Knight -- I determined her abilities, but knew that the Forge was more important. And more..." He shook his head. "She had no Delta-V capacity, the only ships on Stumble are hulks. Useless. Sundivers only come once every few years. More than enough time for us to collect her with one of our fast skiffs from worlds nearer to Stumble on the Chain."

"Oh?" Vorsoth asked. "Is that so?"

Again, he made no movement...and again, the image changed. This time, it showed a holographic recreation of a sundiver. This one was about a quarter of the size of the Victrix Imperita but was constructed along a similar lines: Conical in shape, with a massive thrust plume expanding behind it and huge ice-shields for surviving the final dive into the burning heart of a sun. The IFF data that had come with the image sparked to life around the still scene a moment later -- showing that it had been identified as the Tiamat, a sundiver registered as belonging to some scummer captain that Drak had never heard of before.

But then, blinking at the bottom of the read out, were the words that mattered: Suspected Alliance Contact.

Drak felt a stabbing pain in his fingers. His claws wanted to bust out as he tightened his hands into fists. That fucking asshole. Theodosius hadn't told him any Alliance ship had been in the system. Hell, he hadn't even mentioned that there had been any other ship. He was sure of it, even now, Theodosius was driving the Victrix after the Tiamat, planning to get the prize of not only capturing an Alliance smuggler...but also getting another potential Penitent to add to the roster.

And it left Drak holding the bag.

Vorsoth cocked his head. "The first rule of our order is that no Liminal Knights can be allowed to live that do not bend their knee to the Emperor Rehoboam. If even one joins our enemies, our many enemies..." He shook his head. "This mission was supposed to be a chance for you to prove yourself better than your genetics, Drak."

"Sire, I-" Drak started.

"Silence," Vorsoth said, his voice growing a notch deeper. He stood in a single fluid motion, the frills surrounding his head growing a brilliant red. His hand hefted the immense weight of his threshold blade with ease, aiming the massive tip of it down towards Drak. "You failed us for the last time, Drak."

Drak thrust out his hand. There was a shimmer and a pop and the projectors showed one image that he had longed to cherish for himself, to puzzle out in deep meditation. It had been a mystery, and one that would have been fun to solve himself. Now? Now it was a purely desperate gambit. But the inquisitors all shifted, their heads canting as they looked at the girl. The beautiful, naked, freckled girl, looking straight at them from her holographic phantasmagoria. Even Vorsoth was silenced for a moment. His eyes widened.

"Her..." he whispered.

Drak looked at Venn's image, then at Vorsoth. "What? What about her?"

"Where did you see that girl!?" Vorsoth bellowed, stepping forward, his sword dragging along the ground, his frills flaring a brilliant golden red. "Tell me now, you mutant filth!"

Drak forced himself to not quail. "In my dreams, sire."

Vorsoth looked back to the image, then at Drak. His lips pursed. "Very well, then, Drak..." He murmured. "Do you know where she might be? Do you have any idea where on the Chain to find her? Reach out with your feelings -- see what your djinn has to say about this." His eyes narrowed and Drak knew he was querying his own djinn -- his own Machine. Drak closed his eyes and tried to hear that voiceless voice that whispered in the depths of his mind. He tried to reach out for Venn. But all he felt was the pale warmth of the room, the memory of the grass. Then a sound. A faint whirring sound. A crackling. A hiss. The roar of the crowds. A scent of ozone and discharge. The sound of a whip snapping.

His eyes opened. "I have a sensorium, sire," he said. "I will begin comparing it to world cultures, to see if I find anything."

"Do it," Vorsoth said.

Drak stood. His head bowed and he risked a single question. "Sire..." he paused. "Who is she? What vision is she caught up in?"

Vorsoth was silent for some time. His eyes regarded Venn with the cold calculation of a raptor. He let the tip of his sword rest against the ground, while the inquisitors all looked to him, waiting with baited breath. Vorsoth shook his head. "That is not for you to know, Lord Drak. Go. Go to the library artifex and find what world the sensorium leads you too. If you find this..." He paused. "Do you have a name for her?"

"Venn," Drak said, without hesitation. "Her name is Venn."

"If you find this Venn," Vorsoth said. "Then we shall be most pleased with you. Now go."

Drak bowed -- turned -- and strode away, his back stiff.

Head held high.