> Attacks across multiple prefectures have alarmed royal officials and local Sajoku constabularies. The unexplained outbreak of violence so close to the sakoola festival season has sparked fears of an organized effort by Asantu-sar agitators to disrupt the upcoming celebrations across Nomu. In a disturbing turn of events, authorities in Akushima Prefecture cornered one suspected perpetrator who detonated an explosive device, killing herself and two members of the prefectural constabulary.

>

> Leaders of the self-styled Tavit-wey equality movement have strongly denied any involvement in the attacks, some of which have been notorious for their brutality and wanton destruction. Movement leaders denounced the assaults, saying that such violence had 'no place in a peaceful society'. Royal Bureau of Security and Investigations officials wouldn't comment on the record, but sources speaking on background suggested that evidence existed linking members of a radical Asantu-sar faction to the attacks. Officially, security forces will be increasing patrols in Lankash and the prefectural capitals during festival week.

- Tojiro Surata

Inusagi Today

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41:03:25 GrS

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Anais Sykes was certain of two things: the trust her father had placed in her to run their Mid Rim operation, and the utter corruption of the creature standing amid the circle of dull metal frames that held the tortured bodies of adolescent Rayeths.

Two hulking guards wearing gray carapaces, long blaster rifles over their shoulders, and enclosed helmets with glossy red faceplates opened the trapezoidal door, then took flanking positions. Their host looked up as Sykes entered with Rawl at her shoulder. The biohazard containment field surrounding the frames was noticeable only as a vague shimmer, but Anais knew exactly how far it extended, how far she could venture into that chamber without being exposed to whatever miasma laced the air on the other side of the energy barrier.

The field did nothing to block the whimpers and wails of the captive amphibians. Their smooth round heads hung under the weight of heavy domes, thick with wires, tubes, and mechanical contraptions. There were clear lenses over the unfortunate creatures' eyes, which bled a stream of sticky, stringy white tears. Every one of them shook, though their bodies were so emaciated they seemed more like the husks left behind after molting. Pale pink liquid drained down a clear tube at the base of each young Rayeth's skull, a mere trickle that was the priceless goal of Syke's operation. The horrified noises issuing from the children hardly registered with her. Their suffering was the price of business.

The scientist's shoulders shifted at the disturbance. After a moment of staring at the intruders, he took stiff strides through a mechanized arch. His flowing blue robe crawled with intricate gold and silver embroidery, a stark contract to the black body armor covering him from the neck down. His yellow eyes were piercing and baleful. Beneath them, the short tentacles hanging from his ruddy cheeks twitched.

"For what reason have you interrupted my work, Madam Sykes?" His deep, mellow voice barely disguised a hard edge.

"My Lord Agonis," she opened with a sliver of a smile and a gracious bow. Skyes found the Sith scientist's preening arrogance to be a banal anachronism, but playing on his ego usually had the desired effect. "As you are a man of science, I'm sure I don't need to remind you how important timing is. The Zephyr project has been carefully planned, almost down to the day, yet we are behind schedule."

"Your schedule and the details or your project are of little interest to me, madam." The creature flicked sharp-nailed fingers.

Behind her, Zorath Rawl flinched, his hand darting toward the chunky blaster under his long jacket. Her head of security had always been twitchy around the Sith who claimed to be eight centuries old and wielded dark powers of the Force. Rawl wouldn't admit it, but he was scared of the alchemist. Anais could understand that; Brutal as the man's reputation was, Rawl's depravity was like a candle to Agonis's sun.

Rawl also lacked the bracers she wore. The field they projected wasn't quite as effective at neutralizing the Force as a real Ysalamir, but it was close, and it didn't require the bulky contraptions that Tyber Zann used to keep the odd creatures fed and healthy.

She flicked a glance at the power readout on the bracers before responding. "They should be, my lord. Our patron requires results that are successful and timely."

"Hm," Agonis coughed a reply. "Zann has his results. My techniques have increased the extraction efficiency three-fold, with a commensurate improvement in the quality of the isolate, have they not?"

"That isn't the twenty-fold you promised, and it's far short of what is needed for the Zephyr project to operate at scale."

"Then bring me more of these Rayeths. There is a planet full of them beneath our feet."

"We have only one submarine that can travel to their colonies, and every trip we make risks exposing our operation."

"Have you not paid this planet's authorities for their silence?"

"Of course, but that's no guarantee that mouths will remain shut, that logs will be appropriately scrubbed. Ultimately, success lies in secrecy, Lord Agonis, as do all of Tyber Zann's deisigns."

"Nevertheless, without more subjects, the extraction rate will not meet your goal. Bring me more Rayeths," he said, letting exasperation spoil his silky tone. "Now I must ask you to leave. I need to meditate and you are an unwanted distraction." He waved his hand and turned on his heel, exiting the room in a flutter of his cloak.

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As soon as their cutter left the Misery's hangar, Rawl relaxed in his seat. "I don't understand why we need Agonis anymore. We have his extraction technique. We should kill him and be done with it."

She made a show of smoothing the thick fur surmounting the shoulders of his long jacket. "Trantawolves have acute hearing, don't they?"

Rawl crinkled his forehead. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You should take a cue from them and listen better," she snapped. "I just got done telling Agonis. We. Don't. Have. Enough. Rayeths." She half tapped, half slapped the imposing cyborg's organic cheek as she pronounced each word. "Clear enough for you?"

Rawl rubbed a finger over his stubbled cheek and looked vaguely annoyed at his employer. "Okay, so we go back and grab more."

Sykes uttered a disgusted sigh. "We need thirty billion doses per month, minimum, to meet the target set by Mr. Zann. The best we can do now is about one-tenth of that, and you saw those... subjects. They won't last more than a few more days, tops." She dropped her graceful hands into her lap and looked frustrated. "If we could just synthesize it..."

"Agonis said that won't work."

"Convenient for him, don't you think?" Her eyes flashed.

Rawl shrugged. He made no pretense of knowing or caring what the mysterious Sith's motivations were. "How about cloning?"

Sykes slipped her fingers through her thick blonde hair. "Too expensive and the tech is almost impossible to find these days, to say nothing of people who know how to make it work." There was a beep from the control panel. On the scanner, the long hammerhead outline of the Ammon Night appeared. The blue limb of Inusagi barely appeared at the bottom edge of the small shuttle's viewport, but there was no sign of a ship in orbit. "It's hard enough getting decent stealth generators to keep us hidden up here."

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

It wasn't until they were on final approach, a hundred meters away, that the heavily customized Sphyrna corvette was visible to the eye. Even then it was little more than a distinct shimmer against the starfield. The docking bay's armored doors cracked open revealing a dark interior, the better to maintain the ship's stealth profile. Rawl tripped the landing circuit and the cutter maneuvered into the bay with bursts of thruster gasses, then settled on the deck. The heavy doors closed behind them.

"We'll send a sample of the isolate to our scientists. They can synthesize nearly any chemical compound. In the meantime—" She traced circles on the padded armrest with her fingers and looked unhappy— "Start planning another run to the Rayeth colonies and contact the Quarrens. We paid them handsomely to procure eight of those submersibles. I want those ships or their tentacled heads, now. Clear?"

"Yes ma'am."

Sykes left her seat and headed for the cutter's exit ramp. Tyber Zann was expecting her report that they were getting back on schedule. Her father might be one of the crime lord's most trusted lieutenants, but that wouldn't save her from his wrath if she didn't produce results.

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Reiko flipped up her welding shield and reviewed the bead of barely glowing duranium fusing the meter-long bracket to Ajakeet-2's ventral hull. She shined her torch, looking for defects, then double-checked with her microscanner.

"I'm sure it's fine, Rei-sha," said Sera, striding into the bay.

"Sera-sha!" Reiko smiled. She waved the plasma welder she was holding, pointing toward the bracket. "Maybe, but your welding's a lot better than mine."

"I don't know," responded the taller woman, testing the work by giving it a sharp tug. "Seems solid to me." She grabbed a magnetic cargo clamp from the bench. "Want a hand?"

"Of course!"

Sera drummed her fingers against a bulky-looking tractor beam projector. "Gonna install this too?"

"Mmm, not sure yet. I'm worried about the power consumption. Even with Uncle Shin's improvements, Ajakeet's reactors don't have a lot of surplus power, and she has pretty small storage batteries. Plus it's heavy. I don't know if it's worth it."

Sera held the clamp while Rei connected the power and control circuits, then tucked the wiring up into the hull. "Won't it be hard to grab the cargo containers without a tractor beam?"

The engineer nodded at a miniature camera next to the projector while she worked her hydrospanner to fasten the bolts. "I figured Lyra could use the Chimera's tractor beam to hold the containers stationary, then Taz can maneuver Ajakeet into position and snag them using that camera to visualize the cargo. It's a lot lighter than a tractor beam projector and it hardly uses any power." They switched positions and she tightened the remaining bolts.

"Doc can use it? What about Nimor?"

Reiko chuckled. "I get the feeling she'll make Taz move the cargo. If she gets into Ajakeet here, it'll be to fight."

"Got her figured out, do you, Rei-sha?"

"Mm." After a few seconds, Reiko added, "I was kind of jealous when I saw you two at that police station."

"Noticed that." Sera gave her a wink. "Guess I'm the kind all the women want to sleep with."

Rei's small, adorable mouth formed a pout. "I'm being serious."

Sera smiled solicitously. "She'd just killed a man, then watched him explode. It was brutal and disturbing. That kind of thing weighs on you." The commando let out a brief sigh. "Remember how you felt after you shot that buckethead when we boarded the Iron Glove?"

Reiko nodded, shivering at the memory of how horrified she'd been then and for months after.

"Lyra just needed someone to lean on, that's all." She cradled Rei's pretty round face. "You know you're my girl, right? No one will ever change that."

"I know," Rei begrudged, but her pout turned into a diffident smile under Sera's intense green-eyed gaze.

"Good." She gave Reiko a long kiss. "Nimor's not my type, my love. She's... like a sister I enjoy sparring with. If I had a sister, that is."

"Are you sure? She's beautiful, and her eyes are so pretty."

Sera cocked a wry smile. "You think so? Maybe it should be me who's worried!"

"Absolutely not!" protested Reiko and kissed Sera back.

"Thought Yuzu was helping you." Rendix barely grunted as she hefted the next clamp into place.

"Fabricating the brackets ran down his batteries, so he's recharging." Reiko inserted the bolts, then started to tighten them. As she worked, a beeping sound made the two of them look over their shoulders.

"Oh!" Reiko exclaimed as a droid rolled into the bay. "Haven't seen many droids around. Who are you?"

The droid beeped and whistled.

"T Three Seven R Fifteen?" Reiko scrunched up her mouth. It had a restraining bolt fitted on its stout trunk. "Don't think I've heard of a T-Three before. You look more like a T-Seven to me. Are you an astromech? Utility model?"

T3-7R-15 answered with a string of whistles and hoots.

"Both, huh?" She aimed a smile at Sera. "His Binary dialect reminds me of an R-series but I think he's a lot older."

"How much older?"

"A couple of centuries. Could be more." The droid had two legs angled forward, and a big traction roller at the back that gave him a very solid tripod stance. His head was a stepped, squat frustum, dominated by a big greenish-blue photoreceptor. "He looks an awful lot like a T-Seven, except his torso's different and that model hasn't been made for hundreds of years."

"For an antique he's very clean," commented Sera. The droid was painted pearlescent silver with metallic green accents. Some of his maintenance panels appeared to be burnished copper and when Sera looked closer she saw that he was decorated with elegant etchings. "Stylish, too. Honestly, he looks like a luxury model. Doesn't seem like he's done a lot of work."

The droid chirped in protest and spun around.

Reiko giggled. "You're a pilot on the Navata? That would fit an R-Three's programming, more or less. Some kind of custom build, I suppose," she mused. "What brings you in here?"

T3-7R-15 made a trilling reply that drew a broad smile from her.

"What'd he say?"

"That he was bored and curious since they don't get visitors very often."

That made Sera laugh. "Maybe we should give him something to do."

"Good idea. Would you like to help us with Lyra and Taz's ship, T-Three?"

The droid made animated noises and rotated his head back and forth.

"Of course we know Lyra; she's our friend."

"Well, let's not get carried away," Sera drawled.

In response to the droid's inquiring sounds, Rei said, "Sera-sha and I are adding cargo clamps to Ajakeet-Two." She nodded to a module on the workbench. "Would you like to install that camera?" She pointed to a spot she'd marked on the hull a little forward of where they were working. "It goes just there."

The droid waggled back and forth and chirped an affirmation. His manipulator arm telescoped out from a long green door at the corner of his rectangular torso. He grasped the camera and wheeled beneath the ship. The door on the opposite corner of his body opened, exposing another arm tipped with a plasma cutter on a three-axis joint. Repulsor pods popped out of the droid's shoulders and he floated up, then started cutting an opening in the hull.

Rei and Sera shared amused looks and returned to work. While she was tightening the fasteners, Reiko asked, "Where are Taz and Lyra, anyway?"

"On the Chimera. Said they wanted to take a look at the data that the Rayeths gave them."

T3-7R-15 made a suspicious-sounding interrogative.

"Taz? He's another friend of ours," Reiko answered. "He's in love with Lyra."

T3 made a decidedly derisive buzz followed by a long train of Binary sounds. Rei laughed so hard she nearly dropped her spanner.

Sera arched a brow. "I think he's jealous."

T3 whistled another question.

"Sure," Rei answered, "we can go see Lyra as soon as we're done here. How about that?"

The droid issued a bright trilling hoot.

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Lyra and Taz took seats at the countertop bar near the galley staring at a shallow bowl filled with seawater. Lyra picked up the rough-textured little disk the Rayeths had given them.

"Okay," Taz nodded expectantly at the thing. "How do we open it?"

"No idea," Lyra answered with a frown. "I thought maybe you'd know since you spent time in their heads."

"Sorry, nothing like that came up." He poked at it with his finger. "Revered Mother Brondvin called it a shell. Maybe we just crack it open. Like a nut, I mean."

She cracked a wry smile. "Let's try something that doesn't destroy it, Officer Oktos." She held it to her ear and shook it, but heard nothing. The surface was featureless, other than its sandy texture. "What about imaging it?"

Taz snapped his fingers. "Medscanner!" He glanced toward the medbay. "Ariel?"

At the sound of her name, Ariel emerged from sleep mode, her photoreceptors glowing pale white . She floated to the rear of the lounge with a hum of her repulsors. "Do you require assistance, Master Taz?"

Lyra held up the disk. "Could you scan this and let us know what you find?"

"I'd be happy to, Mistress Lyra!" She took the disk from Lyra. Her scanner flickered, projecting a green slice of light that swept over the disk. "There are no life signs that I can detect."

"Can you display its structure?"

Ariel's holoprojector glowed. Data about the object's size, mass, density, and chemical composition scrolled by while the disk showed up as a faint outline. A darker round object appeared in the middle, surrounded by a cloudy layer.

"Show me an edge aspect."

The disk turned in the projection. Lyra peered at it closely and pointed. "What's that?"

The image zoomed in. Sure enough, there was a faint line running around the edge.

"What's this line we're looking at?" asked Taz.

"The object appears to be a container of some kind that is composed of two halves, Master."

Taz shared a look with Lyra. "Like a jar."

"A really short one." Lyra took the disk from Ariel. Pressing it between her palms, she twisted them back and forth. There was a quiet grinding sound, like sandstones rubbing together. Carefully she lifted the top. Inside was a flat disk of thick, moist-looking gel. Almost transparent at its edge, it turned greener and denser toward the middle with a dark center the size of her thumbnail.

She poked at the squishy thing with her finger. "Feels like a gessily oyster. Looks more like some kind of jellyfish, though."

"Excellent work, mistress Lyra," said Kallista, who'd taken an interest in their investigation and sauntered over.

"Thanks, Kalli. Start recording, would you?"

The recording light on the BD-3000's torso glowed a steady blue. "Recording in progress, Mistress."