Sobon woke with a start, and his first in­stinct was to spin up his aether dy­namos, which had con­tin­ued slug­gish­ly cir­cling af­ter he fell un­con­scious. It was a good re­ac­tion, he de­cid­ed, the lit­tle bit of self-af­fir­ma­tion keep­ing him go­ing when his en­tire body wracked with pains from the jolt. Sobon kept his fo­cus on the dy­namos, but forced his breath­ing to steady, then tried to sense the world be­yond his skin.

Of the old man, there was no sign, but some­thing in the far dis­tance was mak­ing him un­com­fort­able. Sobon re­viewed his body, to make sure it wasn't a mis­un­der­stood sig­nal from some­thing in­side, then sighed, and looked at his right-hand­ed spike. The thread of 'healthy' aether he'd pro­duced was so small, and yet... he knew from the ef­fort it took to cre­ate thread out of qi that it was also denser and pur­er than nat­ur­al pow­er. He pulled it out of his spike, mourn­ful­ly, and broke it into pieces, dis­trib­ut­ing it across his body.

The aches and pains eased, but not enough. Mus­cles that were sleep­ing stirred, but not enough. Even his bones seemed to shift their at­ten­tion to him, briefly, but noth­ing he had done was enough, could pos­si­bly be enough. The Rapi­er's med­bay had its own small dy­namo, and small in space­ship terms meant the spike it pro­duced was only as wide as Sobon's thumb--his adult, cy­borg thumb, not this child's. That was the pow­er that ad­vanced med­i­cine re­quired--med­i­cine that could ful­ly re­store lost limbs in hours and in­te­grate cy­borg parts with a man's spir­it in min­utes.

It was also high­er-or­der aether, gen­er­at­ed by a four-di­men­sion­al hy­per­torus, but there was no point in think­ing about that, now.

A minute or two af­ter Sobon fed his body the aether, he forced him­self out of bed. In con­trast to when he had only bare­ly been able to sit up, his body was--at least--will­ing to obey his com­mands, even if every­thing still hurt, and some things were still too wound­ed to con­trol. He limped to what he was sure was a win­dow, though it was board­ed up with rot­ting wood, and did his best to peer out­side.

The clin­ic, such as it was, was on the sec­ond sto­ry of a build­ing, built on a hill­side. Most of the build­ings around it were com­plete­ly ru­ined, though there were ob­vi­ous places where some­one was liv­ing in those ru­ins--rat­ty cloth stretched over open­ings or a camp­fire placed care­ful­ly un­der the re­mains of a floor above, de­spite the build­ing miss­ing walls and a ceil­ing. Those ru­ins stretched on for a while, un­til--up­hill a ways--there was a mas­sive stone wall block­ing all oth­er views in that di­rec­tion.

Un­like the ru­ins, the wall was pris­tine, and he could see the gleam­ing met­al of sol­dier's ar­mor atop it. The wall was un­nerv­ing; once he laid eyes on it, he could sense it, so it had to have been re­in­forced by aether, or had a ...spell cast over it. What­ev­er the lo­cals did with their bas­tardized aether, he sup­posed. He glanced around, look­ing for signs of oth­er ac­tiv­i­ty, and no­ticed an area slight­ly up­hill where all the ru­ins had been re­duced to seared grav­el in a large ra­dius, and the ru­ins just past them were black­ened by char.

Mo­tion caught his eye as he con­sid­ered that, and he looked down the street, where an old man with a long, clean white beard walked un­hur­ried­ly down the wind­ing street, flanked by two sol­diers in shin­ing met­al ar­mor with nasty-look­ing polearms. As soon as his eyes touched the old man, though, he felt the old man's at­ten­tion snap to him, and he raised a fin­ger to point in his di­rec­tion.

Shit. He pulled away from the win­dow, de­bat­ing whether he would sur­vive jump­ing down onto the street, when the win­dow was torn to pieces by one of the guards bod­i­ly leap­ing through, whose out­stretched arm at­tempt­ed to ar­rest his mo­men­tum on the stone wall, only for the stone wall to tear it­self apart in re­sponse.

Be­hind Sobon, sick chil­dren did their best to scream, but it most­ly came out as coughs.

Sobon took a step back, but the sol­dier was as cold as any cy­borg he had ever fought with, or against. His polearm flicked out, a nasty blade on the back side of it lov­ing­ly cupped Sobon's neck, so gen­tly that the ra­zor-sharp edge didn't cut him, even when Sobon stum­bled back a step.

"You're com­ing with us, boy," the guard said, his shin­ing eyes vis­i­ble even with the light of day be­hind him.

Sobon, though he trust­ed this man not at all, could rec­og­nize that there were no oth­er op­tions aside from his own death. So he nod­ded, not quite able to work his tongue well enough to speak, and with his jaw so tight with ten­sion he could feel his teeth grind­ing. Es­cap­ing the butch­er had been a long shot, and run­ning away from the old man had seemed doable, as long as the old man didn't see good rea­son to chase him, but this was dif­fer­ent.

The man reached out and grabbed him by the throat, drag­ging him out of the win­dow. Along the way, the man's head banged into the stone top­ping the win­dow, and for a mo­ment, the stone won; the sol­dier paused, back­ing up un­til he could clear­ly see what had got­ten in his way, and then forcibly head­butt it, shat­ter­ing the stone and col­laps­ing the wall on top of it.

In the same mo­ment, the guard leaped out, but be­hind them, Sobon heard a noise that he knew was the roof col­laps­ing on the clin­ic. It last­ed too long to have been noth­ing more than the wall, and Sobon didn't hear much in the way of stone land­ing on the street.

He hadn't known any­thing about the oth­er in­valids there, and for all he knew, they were all lost caus­es, but that was no ex­cuse. The rot­ten mon­ster hadn't need­ed to take out the win­dow; he had done it pure­ly out of spite, and killed every­one else there for no rea­son at all.

"Re­joice, boy." Sobon's eyes widened at the ut­ter­ly calm, even bored, tenor of the white-beard­ed man's voice. He tried to turn to look at him, but couldn't; the sud­den move­ment had shocked his en­tire sys­tem, or else one of them--the old man or the sol­diers--had par­a­lyzed him, some­how. "You have enough qi to be re­cruit­ed into our sol­diery. You will have the glo­ri­ous chance to die for the Czar and have your past sins posthu­mous­ly wiped out, so that you can en­joy an eter­ni­ty of servi­tude in the ser­vice of the Di­a­mond Lord, rather than an eter­ni­ty of suf­fer­ing and lamen­ta­tion as one of the un­cho­sen." His voice re­mained bored and rote, to the very end, and he bare­ly paused be­fore ad­dress­ing the sol­dier. "Take him back and meet us at the end of the street. I'll throw in five pence if you don't make us wait."

The sol­dier hold­ing him grunt­ed, and Sobon was dragged by his neck on an in­creas­ing­ly fran­tic jour­ney down streets and across rooftops, bare­ly able to even open his eyes as the pres­sure on his neck seemed to crush his spir­it as though on ac­ci­dent.

Fi­nal­ly, Sobon was tossed to the ground, rolling on hard stones, and he dim­ly heard the man re­port, "Slum re­cruit from Min­is­ter Celb." And then, with an ex­plo­sion of force, he was gone.

There was a mo­ment of still­ness, then foot­steps marched up to him, and then a hand grabbed each of his arms. Sobon found he still couldn't move as he was lift­ed up and turned to face an ugly, owlish man sit­ting be­hind a small table in a cramped stone room.

He was writ­ing, and Sobon found him­self un­sur­prised to note that the old man seemed to be sound­ing out the let­ters one by one as he wrote. Every­thing here was so prim­i­tive, so bar­bar­ic, that he want­ed to de­stroy it all. In his mind, the idea of a Crestan bat­tle­cruis­er nuk­ing the plan­et and start­ing over from scratch went from a state­ment on his own peo­ple's self­ish­ness to an in­creas­ing­ly earned out­come of this all.

The scribe fin­ished writ­ing, and clear­ly re­viewed what he had writ­ten down. "Mi... ni... ster... Celb. One... re­cruit." The man looked up from his let­ters, his owlish fea­tures and small round glass­es mak­ing him look only more fool­ish in Sobon's eyes as the man stud­ied him. Sobon glared back; from what he could tell, ei­ther the man had no qi of his own, or he was too weak to be worth men­tion­ing. "Looks to be... half-star bronze at most. Just bare­ly above the thresh­old. Dis­ap­point­ing." He dipped his pen in an inkpot and moved it back over the pa­per, his mouth mov­ing as he wrote. "H-a-l-f s-b-a... no," he paused, and pulled out a blade. "not b, t." He wiped, or sliced, the pa­per, flicked some­thing away, then re­trieved his pen. "t-a-r. Half star." The scribe looked pleased with him­self, then looked up and nod­ded. "You may take him away."

"Where, sir?"

"Oh, half stars go to the, um," he turned and looked at a very ob­vi­ous chart on the wall, and he strug­gled to read it. "To the... yes, bar­racks three." He turned to the sol­diers and nod­ded. "To bar­racks three."

"Yes, sir." The two sol­diers dragged Sobon out, and Sobon could feel the ground scrap­ing against his legs. The sol­dier who had spo­ken wait­ed un­til he was out of earshot be­fore scoff­ing. "Don't un­der­stand why that one is even still alive."

"Can al­ways use the ex­tra sol­diers," the oth­er replied.

"Not the boy," replied the first. "I mean Scribe Thims. Half the guard could do his job bet­ter than he could."

"Oh, I won't ar­gue that," replied the oth­er guard, sound­ing al­most cheer­ful. "You know I killed a star beast last week and now even I can read and write bet­ter than that old bas­tard. Didn't even get to sit around and ab­sorb its qi, let alone the core, but just be­ing around the blast­ed thing as it was dy­ing was good for my brains. My skin, too, I think, but no one's men­tioned it."

"No one knows what your skin looks like," the first guard snort­ed. "You nev­er take off your ar­mor and you nev­er bathe."

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"I do too take off my ar­mor!"

"Not at work."

"I... well, no." The guards both went silent for a time. "Still, pity the boy, in'nit?"

"Bet­ter him than any of the city kids."

"I sup­pose," he said, slow­ly. "Still, the starspawn are nasty un­til you get your first star."

"First noth­ing," the first replied. "Any­thing less than third star Bronze hard­ly sur­vives a fight." At once, the two of them re­leased Sobon, who had been lis­ten­ing as well as look­ing ahead, and watch­ing as they ap­proached a man guard­ing a rat­ty wood door. "Slum re­cruit, half star."

"Not even a half star," replied the door guard. "Let me get the leg chains."

Sobon wasn't much of a crier--that sort got weed­ed out by the Marines quick­ly enough--but the knot of frus­tra­tion in his chest was get­ting to be un­bear­able. This was fast be­com­ing a dis­as­ter, with no chance of re­cov­ery; it was dif­fi­cult to know just how bad things ac­tu­al­ly were, but these didn't seem like the sort of peo­ple who would wait for him to heal be­fore throw­ing him to his death.

"Ac­tu­al­ly..." the voice of the man at the door came back. "He's pret­ty wound­ed, isn't he?"

"Oh, bad­ly," agreed the cheer­ful guard.

"We'll be ship­ping out soon, he's wound­ed and a half-star, and I'm al­most out of leg-irons, so would you do us all a fa­vor and throw him in the corpse pit? If he's go­ing to die, he might as well feed the bar­gles."

"Sounds good to me!" The cheer­ful guard reached down and stripped the clothes off of Sobon with a sin­gle vi­o­lent yank, then dragged him along by his arm into the bar­racks. "More's the pity, boy, but all for the best, you'll see. At least, as­sum­ing the Chan­cel­lor's ly­ing about all that Di­a­mond King stuff." A pause. "Di­a­mond... Lord? King? Em­per­or? What­ev­er it was. Nev­er held to that stuff any­way." Then, loud­er, "Open up the corpse pit, got a fresh one for you."

"Fresh one," replied a voice, also too cheer­ful, and there was a metal­lic scrap­ing.

Sobon found him­self fight­ing the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure that was still crush­ing him, still par­a­lyz­ing him, but it was only as he was lift­ed and thrown into dark­ness that the for­eign en­er­gy washed away from him, leav­ing him just bare­ly able to move. He twist­ed to look down, grab­bing his body, spir­it, and two dy­namos with his will, his mind scream­ing at him, and just bare­ly man­aged to ori­ent his body to ful­ly land on the back of what looked to be a gi­ant, fur­ry pig.

It squealed at him, and Sobon pushed off from it, back­ing against the wall and pour­ing every ounce of his spir­it into the two dy­namos. Al­though he could feel his spir­it suf­fer­ing as the qi left him, he knew this was one last do-or-die chal­lenge, and though it would prob­a­bly kill him, he would make a show­ing of it.

"He's not dead?" Dim­ly, Sobon heard some­one above.

"Oh, he ba­si­cal­ly is," ar­gued the cheer­ful guard. "And he's only half­sies."

Sobon fo­cused on the dark­ness, where he could see a half dozen enor­mous fur­ry pigs stalk­ing in and out of the bro­ken light from over­head. One made a mock­ing, growl­ing squeal at him, a noise that sound­ed like a de­mon­ic laugh, and which bared the crea­ture's sharp teeth at him. Still, they stalked for a mo­ment in­stead of charg­ing.

"You can't just throw a live one down there," ar­gued the voice. "What if he in­jures a bar­gle? They're sen­si­tive. You go in­jur­ing them and they'll be squeal­ing for weeks."

One of the bar­gles fi­nal­ly charged, and Sobon took his left spike and gath­ered the aether in his palm. He dodged, smack­ing the thing in the head, then spun around, find­ing an­oth­er bar­gle ap­proach­ing, mouth split en­tire­ly too wide, to show off a mouth­ful of very sharp teeth, go­ing back far too deep into his head. Sobon used his mo­men­tum and forced his feet out from un­der him, feel­ing the im­pact on his hips, and thrust his left hand into the pig's throat as hard as he could.

It col­lapsed on top of him.

"I told you, he's only half­sies," the cheer­ful guard said. "Look, some dimwit Min­is­ter thought he was worth re­cruit­ing, but he's half­sies and half dead. Be­sides, if the bar­gles haven't com­plained yet, he couldn't have caused any trou­ble."

"Well..."

An­oth­er bar­gle ap­proached him, teeth spread and drool leak­ing out from his low­er jaw. Al­though he was too far away to hit, Sobon jabbed at his snout, us­ing the mo­tion to throw a small mea­sure of aether at it. As it hit, the bar­gle leaped back, a scream com­ing from its mouth.

"There, see? I told you, sen­si­tive. Who told you it was al­right to throw a live one in there? Be­cause I as­sure you, the base com­man­der isn't go­ing to be hap­py lis­ten­ing to bar­gletalk."

"I thought this group was mov­ing out soon?"

"Hadn't heard that."

Sobon strug­gled to get out from un­der­neath the bar­gle that had him pinned, but two more were cir­cling now, teeth glar­ing at him in the dark­ness. Des­per­ate, Sobon took more of his body's spir­it--though it felt en­tire­ly too low to him al­ready--and jammed it into his right hand cy­cle, and then ripped the pow­er from his spike back into his body. The re­sult was a brief spike in his body strength, and he man­aged to pull his legs free, just as one of the bar­gles got up the nerve to snap at him.

This time, Sobon smashed him straight in the snout with his left hand, and like the first two, he dropped with­out a sound.

"In any case," the cheer­ful guard said, "they only need to take one bar­gle along for field ra­tions, so I'm sure the com­man­der will be hap­py to leave the yowl­ing men­ace to you." He chuck­led. "None of my busi­ness, af­ter all. I'm just fol­lowin' or­ders."

"You haven't said whose or­ders they were."

Sobon fed some of his body's spir­it back into the dy­namos, find­ing--as he ex­pect­ed--most of the right-hand aether had been used up al­ready. Still, just bare­ly, he came out ahead; like the dy­namos them­selves, aether could con­tribute to a pos­i­tive feed­back cy­cle, but only for healthy peo­ple, and only when care­ful­ly con­trolled. As the last bar­gle still threat­en­ing him stud­ied him, try­ing to de­cide whether or not to try his luck, the whin­ing one in the back of the room dug it­self into a pit and switched to a more pa­thet­ic, whim­per­ing ca­dence to his noise-mak­ing.

At last, the clos­er bar­gle at­tacked, and Sobon dodged and punched him in the side of the head. He, like the rest, col­lapsed.

"Mat­tak said he's out of leg irons," the cheer­ful guard replied. "He's also th' one who said these folk are ship­ping out. Says there's no point in him dy­ing in the field, since he's too weak to be any use to us."

"Too weak," snort­ed the guard on pit duty. "Still man­aged to spook one of the bar­gles, though. ...Come to think of it, not so much gnaw­ing and tear­ing down there. Did he scare the rest off? Usu­al­ly they're too dumb to in­tim­i­date, but I sup­pose even a half star might have a lucky break."

"Oh come on, a half­sy that could even use the qi in 'em is un­heard of. Takes folk years to learn how to har­ness that stuff. What, are you re­al­ly goin' to look? Macabre, ain't it?"

"Shut it," the pit duty guard said. "It's my job, in­nit?"

Sobon was look­ing up when the two guards peeked over the edge of the pit down at him. For ef­fect, even though the pain was mad­den­ing, he de­lib­er­ate­ly raised one leg and put it on the near­est bar­gle, which was still out af­ter he'd punched it. He had no idea if it was dead or stunned--he doubt­ed he had done enough to kill any of them--but he gave the two his best, de­fi­ant stare any­way, and fo­cused on just hold­ing onto his two dy­namos, keep­ing them spin­ning with every­thing that he had.

The two guards stared at him for a mo­ment, then ex­changed glances, and sud­den­ly one guard slugged the oth­er in the face and start­ed shout­ing, his voice am­pli­fied and echo­ing off the walls of the bar­gle pit. "BASE COM­MAN­DER! WE GOT A PROB­LEM WIT' TH' BAR­GLES!"

Sobon found him­self sneer­ing up­wards, even though he felt faint. Now that the im­me­di­ate prob­lem was han­dled, he found his head swim­ming, and he felt like falling over. He pushed him­self as best he could to stand there de­fi­ant­ly, even as his limbs trem­bled and his wounds bled. It oc­curred to him that the filthy pit junk had prob­a­bly got­ten into his wounds, but for just this mo­ment, he judged that the most im­por­tant thing he could do was im­press who­ev­er was in com­mand.

"What do you mean, prob­lem." The voice that came back was in­tense enough that Sobon could taste the spir­i­tu­al pres­sure.

"Blighter threw a live one in the pit and said he was dead, then changed his sto­ry to say he was only a half star, but he's gone and killed or stunned all the bar­gles."

"What?" In a flash, there was a man stand­ing in the mid­dle of the bar­gle pit, and Sobon blinked and turned to face him. He was be­gin­ning to see a pat­tern, here; like the Min­is­ter, this base com­man­der was some oth­er race than the lo­cals, and he car­ried him­self very dif­fer­ent­ly. His fea­tures showed age, but he car­ried him­self with im­pec­ca­ble pre­ci­sion and spir­i­tu­al force.

The com­man­der ges­tured, and the wave of his arm car­ried enough spir­i­tu­al pres­sure to lift Sobon up and pin him against the wall.

"Only stunned," the com­man­der said af­ter a mo­ment. "But he dis­abled all of them. How..." he glanced at Sobon, then in a flash, they were both above ground, Sobon on the ground--and bound with rope. How, he had no idea, but his hands and feet were to­geth­er, and he wise­ly chose not to re­sist or even strug­gle.

"Who de­ter­mined this man to be a half star? He's clear­ly at least two bronze stars."

"Sir!" some­one shout­ed. "That would be Scribe Thims, sir! We was there, we watched him do it!"

"You watched him do it, and didn't ar­gue? You can't tell the dif­fer­ence be­tween half a star and two stars?"

"Ah, well, sir..."

"Take him to the med­ical tent, and I want those two and Thims de­tained. I will de­ter­mine who here was ly­ing, or in­com­pe­tent, be­fore the end of the day, and see them put to death."

Sobon hissed a half-laugh into the dirt, en­joy­ing a mo­ment of re­lief and the knowl­edge that these bar­bar­ians would suf­fer. Ap­par­ent­ly, that was wrong; sud­den­ly, he was jerked into the air by his bonds, and the face of the Base Com­man­der was inch­es from his own.

Sobon took the mo­ment to study him, but the se­vere fea­tures of the man were dif­fi­cult to place, ex­cept to say that they were not like the lo­cals. He showed no signs of be­ing over­weight, at least, and his aether--from what Sobon could tell with­out open­ing him­self up more--was both in­tense and odd­ly steady, un­like the twist­ed and vi­o­lent qi that had sur­round­ed most peo­ple so far.

"What amus­es you, sol­dier?"

Sobon was be­gin­ning to feel the lim­its of his ex­haus­tion again, hav­ing spent too much of his body's qi re­fill­ing his two spikes. Still, he didn't dare not try to use this to weasel some oth­er ad­van­tage out of the sit­u­a­tion. "...not sol­dier," he said, find­ing his mouth dry and his tongue un­will­ing to prop­er­ly co­op­er­ate. "...not re­cruit. Not go­ing to work for you ...mur­der­ing ass­holes."

The base com­man­der, with­out any in­crease in his emo­tions at all, reached out and grabbed Sobon by the throat, again.

"You must be a slum re­cruit then, as any­one else in this place would know they had no choice." The com­man­der lift­ed him by the neck, but didn't par­a­lyze Sobon, and in fact didn't seem to squeeze him at all. "But I'm cu­ri­ous what you mean by mur­der­ing. We are a law­ful peo­ple."

What could Sobon say? What had the id­iot guards called the man? How could he get the most sym­pa­thy here? He set­tled on a phrase he hoped would be poignant. "Fam­i­ly... killed by... Celb."

The Base Com­man­der's head rolled back slight­ly. His aether field re­mained steady, but Sobon was sure that the look on his face flick­ered to anger slight­ly.

"I will in­ves­ti­gate this claim," he said. "But you are still a sol­dier of the Czar's Grand army. All men of at least half a bronze star's qi rank­ing are draft­ed, for the good of all. No mat­ter your cir­cum­stances, you will serve." The Com­man­der re­leased him, and Sobon col­lapsed on the ground. "See that his wounds are treat­ed."

"Yes, sir."

Sobon gri­maced, but it hid a smile. He want­ed to see every­one that had wronged him burned; this was a good start, but get­ting prop­er med­ical help would be a far, far bet­ter start to his re­venge.

Even if it came with mil­i­tary ser­vice.