Allana Rayker’s maintenance shuttle approached the lower service bay of Jupiter Station, the largest man-made structure in the galaxy. Huge, and regularly spaced triangular openings interrupted the surface of a hollow sphere twenty miles wide, through which vessels could reach the inner dockyards. Home to nearly a million inhabitants, the station orbited three thousand miles above Jupiter’s atmosphere—close enough for awed travelers to make out the intricate swirling patterns in the brightly colored cloud layers.
Once the shuttle landed in one of the station’s smaller Service Division bays, Rayker stepped out, breezing impatiently past the dock personnel. She didn’t thank the crewmen who had prepared this discreet arrival for her, and hadn’t thanked the captain of the freighter for the trip from Caldera. They were cartel men and knew enough of her reputation to accept payment and leave her alone.
She wore a maintenance jumpsuit over her usual attire and carried her possessions in a work bag, which was enough of a disguise to get her out of the docking hangars without being questioned by a supervisor. A private locker in the transit zone held a nondescript travel case, which she exchanged for the work bag after transferring her effects and ditching the suit. She then headed for the star-liner flight deck, strode up to the checkpoint and scanned her phone. The machine beeped happily, as it recognized the forged ident.
“Have a pleasant journey, Ms. Divine,” the border agent said, and Rayker nodded back.
Fortunately, the core world’s security forces were not as energetic in reviewing their population database as their frontier counterparts. If they were, the lesser-known business dealings of a great many politicians would be unacceptably disrupted.
The alias “Carlotta Divine” was senior enough in the Rackeye Research Council to be able to afford first class quarters on a passenger ship from Jupiter to Earth. Rayker had thought about boosting herself up to a Tier One luxury vessel, and all the pleasures of the flesh that would grant her, but decided it wasn’t worth the risk.
Whilst most of the Helvetic aristocracy would never have heard of Allana Rayker, there was always the possibility of running into one of the Justice Service’s senior directors, and Rayker knew that their top-secret file contained her photograph. If caught, she could expect imprisonment and interrogation, while her partner in the Adjudicate would deny any knowledge of her, to save his own skin.
No, for the six-hour trip, hot tubs and massage parlors could give way to a bar, with the possibility of a mid-wit businessman to play with.
Once comfortably settled in her room aboard ship, Rayker messaged Reed, and waited for his video call.
The alert flashed up on the screen, and Rayker tapped to accept. “Well?” she said, pleased to see a cheerful expression on Reed’s face.
“The lab’s teleportation system continues to bear fruit,” he said. “We were able to create a connection to another underground installation in the hills outside of Rackeye. I sent a team over to explore the new complex this morning. That makes fourteen bases discovered on the portal network. Based on the data files we’ve already translated, I’m confident there are an additional four waiting to be unlocked.”
“Hmm. Have you found anything useful?” she asked.
“Useful, Madam?”
“Weapons?”
“Nothing like that, yet. It’s still not clear what purpose these installations were meant to serve.”
“The mountain site we first discovered is clearly for nano-weapons research. I would have expected to find something a little less… esoteric somewhere on the damned planet.”
“I’m afraid we haven’t yet, Madam.”
Rayker tapped her fingers. Once it had become clear that the Calderan farmers could protect themselves against the transformation chambers’ creations, she had ordered the team to investigate the base thoroughly. The discovery of a teleportation device had quite literally opened a new world for Reed’s men to explore. Unfortunately, while competent engineers, the soldiers were far from possessing the training and experience needed to master such advanced technology. But, thanks to Rayker’s ability to translate the base’s computer files, they had located instructional documents and made progress.
“Access to Rackeye is excellent news, Reed. Well done.”
He nodded. “The men are certainly grateful to be finished with those long, risky trips through the farms. I gather there are no complications at your end, Madam? I still think a video call would have been the safer—”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Reed. I could live in Geneva if I wanted to; their security is so riddled with holes. Unfortunately, our friends in the Central Committee are sharp, and won’t be persuaded by anything less than my personal touch.”
“Yes, Madam.”
A few hours later, the passenger ship arrived in Earth orbit. Crewmen nodded respectfully as Rayker stepped into the small, luxurious shuttle that would take her down to the surface of humanity’s home world. She ignored them, settling into a plush leather seat with a growing sense of impatience. The journey from Caldera had been long and tiring, demanding a week of her time. Of course, if her trip was successful, it would mean the culmination of years of preparation.
Travel from the frontier to the core systems by official routes was strictly policed and highly bureaucratic, requiring long waits for documents to be checked and approved. The inflexible regulations were meant to protect the League from unwanted piracy. But everybody knew cartels got through whenever they wanted, crashing their lighter, nimbler freighters to a stop mere light seconds from stars’ outer edges. They lost a few vessels—incinerated in super-heated plasma—every year to this dangerous method, but outwitting the League was lucrative enough to accept the risk. Once through the border zones, they used connections and bribes to travel more freely. Rayker often made use of this method for speed, convenience, and entertainment.
Her shuttle descended through the atmosphere, and she soon saw the blue of Lac Leman glinting sharply in the clear summer air, framed by the towering white peaks of the French Alps. As beautiful and timeless as the mountains were, they were almost upstaged by the sprawl of gleaming silver towers of the Geneva metropolis, crowding the Rhone valley. The innumerable mega-structures were marvels of engineering. Steel and glass rose thousands of feet into the air, surpassing even the height of the smaller Jura mountains, across the lake from the Alps.
Rayker wondered if there were any Swiss people left in the city or surrounding valleys. Probably not—they would have migrated somewhere quiet, mountainous, and dull, no doubt.
A beam of warm sunlight drifted gently through the cabin, as the vessel made subtle alterations to its heading. Rayker sank deeper into her thoughts.
Her informal supervisor in the Helvetic bureaucracy, Cardinal Jansen Merriss, would be eager to know more about her progress on Caldera, or the lack thereof. The colonist population had proven more than usually resistant to the League’s methods of seduction. So now, they were supposed to be living in terror of dangerous alien monsters, begging the League’s military to protect them. Unfortunately, as well as stubborn, the colonists were also courageous and resourceful.
Rayker argued from the start that it was a stupid plan. But, following her disastrous failure to transform humans into obedient killing machines, she had to play along until she was ready to try something bolder. The truth was that the mundane work of turning animals into monsters was outshone by the transporter discoveries her team had made over the years—which she did not choose to share with Merriss. Now she was ready to move to the next step.
The shuttle landed near the base of the Central Adjudicate Building, a towering structure that housed the beating heart of Helvetic culture. Inside its glass walls worked the men and women who kept the last tendrils of the Old Empire embedded in the institutions of other worlds. Maneuvering skillfully, and with the experience of centuries, Adjudicate agents bribed, threatened, and manipulated leaders across humanity’s star systems. Businessmen, politicians, and the naïve leaders of the newer colony worlds were easily absorbed into the League’s web of corruption.
As she entered the luxurious foyer, a guard checked Rayker’s ident and waved her inside. The entrance hall was three stories high, and there wasn’t an inch not decorated with sculptures and paintings of immaculate detail, girded with gold leaf and polished ivory frames. Most of the representations were of legendary agents or political victories. Rayker found it all so tiresome.
The Helvetic elite couldn’t understand, in their obsequious loyalty to old tradition, that power could not remain rooted like a tree. It had to be dynamic; a predator, fast moving and ready to adapt. The old scientists, at least, had understood this principle. They named it the ‘Red Queen Hypothesis’ in reference to the Alice in Wonderland character who had to run constantly just to stay in the same spot.
A half century earlier, the disastrous Frontier war had proven how intolerant the human worlds were to the League’s use of violence. A fragile alliance of planets sent forces to crush cartel activities on Misian and a few surrounding systems. As the violence escalated out of control, accusations of imperialism were thrown against Helvets everywhere. The League backed down, leaving the galaxy’s political ties in a brittle state. But with Rayker’s help, the less ethical members of the Adjudicate were willing to turn to darker schemes. Now that she had gained their trust, it was time to put her own vastly more ambitious plan into action.
She stepped into the elevator and pushed the button for the hundred and fiftieth floor—the highest office in the building. Now she was alone, Rayker allowed herself to stroke the underside of her wrist, tracing the elongated bone needles embedded beneath her skin. Even under stress, she could regenerate them within hours. They always left a bloody mess when they punched through her flesh, but neither that nor the pain disturbed her.
A functionary ushered her into the empty office of the Director of the Adjudicate, a sprawling and luxurious room. Rayker sat in a comfortable leather seat facing an enormous wooden desk and looked out of the floor to ceiling windows. She reflected that she might have been able to enjoy a spectacular view of Mont. Blanc and its surrounding peaks, but for the forest of steel in the way.
Eventually, Cardinal Merris arrived, together with several orderlies. When he saw her, he went white and quickly ushered his aides away.