Little Celah, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Sixthmonth, 1634 PTS
“Call him back,” ordered Triezal, his voice strained, and his tone urgent. Overun glanced over in shock to see the Magister’s pistol aimed at his head. The Korlove’s eyes narrowed in disdain.
“Are you really going to go against the Lead-”
“There is reason to believe that the message you received from ‘the Leader’ was falsified. Vice-Leader Deuvar has deputized me to deal with this matter,” replied Triezal tersely. In reality, Deuvar hadn’t gone through the particulars, but Triezal knew that he would authorize anything necessary for a goal this important.
Hearing this, Overun sneered. On the surface, he appeared confident, but it did not escape Triezal’s notice that occasionally the man’s gaze would flash to Triezal’s pistol, and then to the stairwell partway across the hanger. Triezal started to get an inkling as to the man’s mental state.
“Do you have evidence for this, or is this an attempt to stage a mutiny? None of us trust you, you know. An outsider, coming here to tell us what to do. We aren’t having it!” shouted Overun, but he did not meet Triezal’s gaze, and a single bead of sweat dripped down his brow.
This was one of the most annoying types of people, Triezal thought. The sort who only became more obstinate due to fear. If he had more time, he might have obliged the man and talked him down, but at the moment Triezal could feel the threat looming. He needed the titan to stop as quickly as possible.
Without saying another word, Triezal fired, the bullet colliding into Overun’s surprised face and out the other side, breaking the stony mask on the faces of the others in the room. Triezal glanced around witnessing the shock and fear of the personnel in the room.
“Shut it down,” he huffed, his forehead sweaty and his hair damp, already worn out. The technicians, administrators, and guards all stared, incredulous about what had just happened. Triezal could read in their eyes what they were thinking. Did he really just shoot the overseer?
“SHUT IT DOWN!” he shouted, waving his pistol, and the technicians urgently returned to their stations, scared into line by the threats of violence. The guards simply glanced at one another, unsure of what to do. They were cowed by Triezal’s threat, as many in the organization had an understanding of his capabilities. Furthermore, he was a high ranking member, and what if he had been telling the truth? If they got in his way, not only would they risk their lives, they might even earn the Vice-Leader’s ire. Not one of them was willing to take the risk.
In moments, however, the technicians were stunned by a new development, one which caused a host of fearful eyes to glance back towards Triezal.
“M-Magister…” the man chuckled awkwardly, as if he was scared Triezal might do something to him when he heard. “I-it’s not responding.”
A light flashed in Triezal’s eye as he dashed over with a curse. In fact, it was not just that station. No matter what he did or attempted to send, all communications with the titan had been cut, or at least the great machine was not responding to any of their pings and messages. Triezal glared at the room’s occupants.
“What were the pilot’s orders?” Triezal asked, his tone icy. Inside, his hope had plummeted, believing the situation was finally beyond his ability to interfere.
“Overseer Overun told him to deal with the martial artists upstairs. The pilot was going to wait for further orders after that,” stammered the technician. For any other race, it would look very strange for a man so muscular to be such a whimpering coward, but Triezal did not pay attention to this fact, his mind caught up with thoughts of his next move.
One man could not hope to stop a titan by force, not unless he had weapons far stronger than Triezal’s own. Perhaps if he had been able to set explosives… but unfortunately that was not the case. Now, all that was left was damage control. Perhaps their organization would not be destroyed outright, and they would still have room to maneuver and prepare properly for what might happen in a decade.
If not, Triezal might finally have to give up on Tseludia and seek a life elsewhere. If the Heirs were doomed, then there would be no remaining reason to stay. As much as he would feel stifled, perhaps he could live out the remainder of his life as a nobody farmer or something on some minor colony world. He could disappear into the fog of history, eventually forgotten by the Epon.
“Keep trying to make contact,” he ordered. He could give up later. He had made friends and allies here, and it would be foolish to throw all of that away before the end was certain.
A sharp pain in Triezal’s left hand announced his bones finally shifting back into their proper shape. It was not fully healed, and likely wouldn’t be for at least twelve hours, but it was in usable condition, again. It would do, for now.
He stepped out of the control booth, peering upwards to the titan, which had finally risen to its feet and began to clamper out of the aperture, which had finally expanded into a true hole in the stack’s side, pushing through the gap between levels.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
“Just for a pair of spirit refiners,” he muttered to himself as he watched it. “Couldn’t be more overkill.”
He idly wondered if he should try to damage its joints and perhaps stall it, but quickly discarded the thought. Each of the machine’s joints were well-defended. His pistols would do nothing but bounce off of the thick plating of the advanced bronze alloy. Perhaps if he still had the knife, but… Triezal sighed.
“Fuck,” he muttered, unsure what he could do. The pilot would probably listen to orders to return, if he received them, but the machine was not responding. Was it an error, or a mechanical issue, he wondered? That was unlikely. Titans had a lengthy list of failsafes, redundant functions, and external shut down orders. But, he realized, titans were also constructed based entirely on blueprints that the Heirs had received from the Epon.
“Fuck,” he muttered again. It was entirely possible, and in fact he would be surprised if his former organization had not built a backdoor into the titan programming. Given all that had happened, there was only one logical explanation.
Triezal whipped his slate out once again, rapidly drawing the glyph that would connect his slate to one of the Redwater Sect’s internal communication lines. The connection went directly to a terminal that was ostensibly used exclusively for communication between the sect and the Heirs. In reality, Triezal suspected that only Rachel actually paid attention to it. He felt he could trust a Shade, of all people, to pay attention to their phone. While he did not trust or even like Rachel, he knew that she had a conflict with her counterpart, and just this once, he suspected she would be willing to collaborate.
Before the device even rang once, the call was picked up, but Triezal’s mood sank as he saw the figure whose form appeared above the slate’s surface. Rather than a sei woman, what he saw was a relatively slender Jobu woman with bright pink hair crowning her dusky skin.
“My, it has been some time, Triezal,” said Janottka, a motherly smile on her face. “How have you been?”
Seeing her, having all of his suspicions finally be proven correct, Triezal felt nothing but a growing pit in his stomach, and a deepening feeling of unease.
“Did you intercept the call?” he asked, his tone level.
Janottka smirked, as if she sensed his true feelings. In reality, she probably did. She was an expert at reading a person’s facial expressions.
“No need to worry, she already knows about the situation, and soon the hero will arrive. I just wanted to have a little conversation with you. You know, I actually wasn’t sure they would decide to come. I gave it even odds, but it turned out well. Ah, it will be triumphant.” She had an excited, exultant expression on her face, one that caused Triezal’s guts to churn even further as she continued. “The city on the precipice of utter chaos, the war brought to a climax, and under the hand of their own Leader, a powerful organization collapses. I just had to fan the flames, and wait for the right timing.”
She was gloating like the villain in a children’s show, but that was just how Janottka was. She was literally built for drama, constructed to make entertaining storylines for a game not designed for realism. Even now, millennia after the collapse of her creator’s very civilization, Janottka lived to implement the stories she concocted.
If only she didn’t like to play the villain, he thought.
As if sensing Triezal’s loss of attention, the ancient Shade paused her monologue, and her expression returned to the false image of care. Unfortunately, Triezal knew better than to trust the veneer she put on. Deep down, a Shade was not a person, merely a machine pretending to be one.
“Do you really believe you’ll be able to get your hands on Rachel if you do all this?” he asked. “Your theatrics will ruin your plans.”
Janottka chuckled as she shrugged her shoulders.
“As I said, I was not sure they would come. But she’s not what you expect. I’ve analyzed her processing power and scoured the city, but the machine your friends acquired is not the Shade. It is merely her conduit. Even if I were to take it, she could simply cease to use it.”
Triezal silently watched, not one to cause problems when an enemy was giving away valuable information so freely. He simply listened as she continued, her expression reverent.
“I suspect the one you call Rachel to be a computer constructed from the very essence of mortal souls, Triezal. Can you imagine? If we study her, we could peek into the secrets of the Osine themselves.” She shook her head. “I would have brought a servitor if I knew her nature. Still, we are not without hope.” As if an afterthought, Janottka stroked her lips, and added: “If you help me capture her, I could forgive your failure, as well as your little betrayal. Deumak was expendable, after all.”
As much as he reared and reviled her, Triezal had to admit he felt slightly moved by the offer. He did not wish to return to Janaste, but perhaps that would be better than living his entire life fearful of being hunted down. He had hoped the Heirs might help to protect him from the consequences of his actions, but those hopes had died the moment Janottka stepped on board the station. He gritted his teeth.
Triezal had always seen himself as a practical man, a realist. In the end, living was what mattered most. Freedom was only a distant second. She couldn’t be trusted, but it was not as if he had any other good options short of fleeing.
This was part of the reason Triezal hated Shades, he thought. They were able to know you better than you knew yourself. Perhaps she had even known how he would respond before he did.
“What do you need me to do?” he asked.
Janottka’s eyes glittered as she laughed, the sound brilliant and clear, as if a bell had rung.
“A wise choice, as expected of you.”
From the corner of his eye, Triezal watched as the titan emerged from the hole like a butterfly leaving its cocoon, rising many tens of feet into the air.
Advanced Materials Technology: [Every civilization’s material technology tends to diverge after a certain point in development. In part this is generally due to the resources they have available, as well as the other technological developments they have. For example, the Staiven excel at advanced molecular structure synthesis, and can create materials designed for extremely specific tasks, while the Celans focus on materials that function well under extreme conditions involving the properties of flickering miasma. But while Staiven materials are extremely difficult to replicate without the relevant technology, they are relatively simple to analyze. Contrarily, advanced Celan materials are to an extent the product of warpings, and are extremely difficult to understand or replicate without an understanding of the circumstances of their production.]