Chapter 14

GOODBYES AND GOODLUCKS

We didn’t go to the spaceport.

Instead, we circled around the pyramid that was the former Emperor’s home and settled down next to the sleek, angular corvette that had been my prison for subjective days. As the bulky, beetle looking transport settled to the ground, Mal glanced my way from the piloting rig. “Think we can steal that? It’s closer.”

I mentally kicked myself for ten kinds of idiot – then heard a snarl from Techne.

“That thing, if it has a spindrive, seats, what? Half a person?”

“Three,” I said, quietly.

Rossck sounded like a pot bubbling over. Then the idea hit me.

“Four,” I said, nodding. Then my eyes flicked back to the Alliance troops. Even in the shocktroop gear they’d stolen, they held themselves different than Hegemony goons. Or maybe it was my biased eyes. My gut knotted, but their leader – an earnest looking man with sea-brown eyes looked right at me and nodded curtly.

“Leave us here,” he said, softly.

I chewed my lip. I took the brave, earnest looking Alliance trooper’s hand, squeezing him. The hardened armor of his gauntlet whirred, actuators responding to the touch of a Liminal Knight. I closed my eyes and found the IFF codes in their suit. It was a flimsy disguise – patchy and quick. I slapped some extra patches over it and nodded. “Okay,” I whispered. “Stay by Thale. Be the first responders to find him. Protect him.” My fingers slipped from his hand to his chest and I tapped where his heart would be if there wasn’t several layers of laser proof, shrapnel stopping, bullet bouncing armor between my finger and him. I swear I felt his beat anyway. “Please.”

The Alliance marine nodded. “I swear it, Lady Venn.”

My cheeks heated so much that I knew my dots would be showing. “N-Not a lady.”

Several more IFF pings hit my senses at the same time Mal said: “We’re getting some reinforcements.”

I closed my eyes, focusing on stitching together a sensor mirage of the oncoming Hegemonic troops, to make sure they saw what we wanted to be: The first responders to a smoking holocaust of a disaster. Next to me, I could faintly hear Techne waving the fake shocktroopers off. They thumped and rumbled away, heading for the front of the palace. The reinforcing ships didn’t even bother landing. They hovered overhead, opening their gull wing doors and real troops rained down like heavy seeds. I opened my eyes and knelt beside Techne as we watched the troops heading for the base.

“They’ll be okay,” Techne whispered.

I nodded and took her hand and prayed to every God there was that she was right.

THE TIAMAT II

We hustled onto the stealth corvette once the chaos of the throne room hit fever pitches. If I let my brain skitter away from the moment, I knew it’d settle into a loop of worry and guilt and nerves. So, instead, I focused entirely on the ship.

It was slick.

Adoran and Thale hadn’t spent their time in it idle. Two Liminal Knights, with their threshold blades, could do more than screw silly in a tight cockpit. They’d removed most of the hand held controls and systems, replacing them with floorspace for a sleeping nook that could unfold into a bathing area that could, itself, be formatted into a kitchen space. They’d scooped out what was normally the torpedo tubes and connected them to the main chamber to add additional space, and it looked like Adoran had been halfway through converting one of the tubes into being a sleeping chamber.

I wouldn’t want to sleep in a torpedo tube.

But, hey.

Different strokes.

“How the fuck am I supposed to fly this?” Mal asked, looking around the heavily modded bridge.

I grinned, sheepishly, then held out my threshold blade. “Here,” I said. I furrowed my brow and felt the slumbering miracles that filled the corvette. I touched them to my blade and let the systems grow outwards from there. The two ends of my blade shimmered and made a soft crinkling noise as the nano inside unfolded and became the sturdy handles of a ship’s yoke, with several inlined buttons. When Mal took it, he fingered the buttons and the blade projected up a holographic display. He nodded, slowly. “Primitive, but it’ll work,” he said, quietly, as Rossck knelt beside where a computer console had been.

He didn’t waste time bitching. He just started threading multipurpose cable from his belt pouch into the seam of the floor, hooking it up to his handheld computer. He muttered, very softly: “Guess it’s back to a voice interface.”

Techne nodded. “What kind of guns does this ship have?”

I closed my eyes. “Coaxial claveguns, a dorsal ridge of X-ray emitters, uh, in the three gigajoule range, and a fabricator that’s designed to make up conventional, antimatter, and probe torpedoes.” I grinned. “Normally, she’s got four tubes, but, uh...” I nodded to the two makeshift passages to the front tubes.

“Jesus,” Teche slid her hand along the upper edge of the cockpit. “I like that the Tiamat II has fucking teeth.”

I grinned at her.

Then.

“Wait, what happened to the Tiamat!?”

GOALS

The Tiamat II lifted into the skies above Eudaimonia unnoticed and unremarked on – though it was a close shave thing. Mal flew us with a careful, knife sharp beam of engine thrust to reduce our signature. Even angling our ship to make sure we caught as little radar bounce back as possible, the orbital spacelines of Eudaimonia was thick with worldkillers and space superiority fighters, skimming around every orbital lane, bombarding ships with furious demands. The news was filtering out that something had happened.

For the first time in a thousand years, the Hegemony had gotten its slats kicked.

Still.

The Tiamat II was a frigging stealthship with a Liminal Knight aboard.

We got past the initial sweeps and started our cruise towards the primary. Mal plotted our course, burned up a tiny sliver of our antiproton fuel, and then settled us into a comfortable fall. With agrav gluing us to the deck, he tossed my threshold blade and grinned slightly. “I can see why you Knights like those things so much,” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, chuckling. I looked down at the blade as it retracted the control surfaces it had extruded. “So. Here’s how four of us are gonna stay in here. There’s an acceleration tank in the belly – and enough acceleration gel to fill the bridge if we need it. There’s also some simstim gear in here. I figure we ... well, if we can get the simstim working, we can relax any old place we want and this place can only be used if you’re tired of sim and want to get some reality in.” I gestured around myself with my hand.

“Sounds like a plan,” Techne said. “It’ll be easy for me – my brain is basically a simstim as it is.”

I grinned, shyly. “Yeah...” I looked at the blade.

Rossck shook his head, his frills fanning out. “I missed you, Venn,” he said, quietly. “Only you could just drop the idea that we’re going to live in a sim-stim paradise in a stolen top of the line Hegemonic stealth ship and sound so fucking apologetic about it.”

I shifted out one leg to kick his shin. “I missed you too, Rossck. Though, it may have been less time for me. I was in a sim that was running fast – it’s been about two days.”

Mal breathed out a long, slow sigh of relief. “Of that I’m glad to hear. The idea of being caught up in the Hegemony’s grip for months...” He shook his head. My cheeks went hot again and Mal pursed his lips. “Then again, considering what we saw in the throne room.”

“Spill, Venn,” Techne said. “Don’t leave out any details.”

I flushed. I could do this. Just ... lay it out.

“Uh...” I said. “Okay.” I gulped, then hugged my threshold blade tighter to my chest. “I-I guess it all started when Thale n’ me got connected. I don’t know why we did, but we did. We share dreams. And from that...” I started to lay out everything I’d kept even a tiny bit secret. I told them about the dreams. About how Thale and Adoran had both turned against the Emperor at the pivotal moment. And then, about the prophecy. About how an orphan child was said to be the end of the Hegemony – and how Thale and I were both candidates.

And, I told them that my sword was not merely any old threshold blade.

RED BLOOD, RED BLADE

“Wotan Hohmann,” Mal breathed.

“No fuckin’ way,” Rossck whispered.

Techne didn’t say anything. She just locked her eyes on my sword, considering. “And it’s the red one too,” she murmured, softly. “Red for liberty, for equality, for the blood of everyone who ever died for freedom.” She shook her head. “I thought it was just one of the thousands of imitation red blades.”

I nodded. “It had a lot of programmed in tricks.” I held it out in my cybernetic hand. “I’ve tried to get it to open up about more of its history, but I haven’t had much chances...”

Mal grinned and cracked his knuckles. “Lady Venn-”

“Please!” I closed my fingers tight. “God. No. No Lady ... shit...” I blushed, hard. It reminded me too much of castles and fancy dresses and being laid by silver tongued beasts. “I’m still just Venn of Stumble. No one special.”

“Just a prophesied orphan, destined to bring down great empires, caught in a tragic romance with the beautiful and troubled Hegemonic nobleman,” Techne said, her voice half sark, half tease. I flushed even more and glared at her.

“Fuck that!” I exclaimed. “It’s not tragic till it’s tragic. Anyway! Mal!” I tossed my sword – Hohmann’s sword – to him. He caught it with one of his nimble feet hands. “What were you gonna say?”

“Remember my full job title?” Mal asked, grinning. “I didn’t slave through my PHD program to get a doctorate in piloting.”

My brow furrowed.

Then it sparked. “Oh.”

Malestrom Corgain-Erwitts, Doctor of Applied Program-Archaeology, grinned right back at me.

FIDDLING

Actually setting up the Tiamat II took two days. Over those two days, we all got more than a tiny bit crabby. Mal tucked himself into one of the tubes, where he could curl up with my sword, and fiddle with it and tinker with it and poke at it and whisper sweet, loving things to it. I wasn’t jealous – but I did get a bit sarky when Mal started reacting to every itty bitty little interruption with a grumble and an affronted air. But we needed my sword for spot-fixes and fabrication almost as much as we needed him to poke at it.

See, Rossck had done a check on all the acceleration systems and while the tank had a multipurpose fit that would let it socket up to anyone with any acceleration implant, the generalized acceleration system required Hegemonic implants. So, if we used the same system that Thale and Adoran used, my friends would get their organs smashed to jelly. Thus, we spent hours tinkering with the acceleration tank, adding extra tubing and wires to extend outwards into the bridge, so when the bridge flooded with acceleration gel, the tank would be able to pump the required additives to our guts to keep them safe.

Then we actually had to find the simstim gear and modify it. Adoran and Thale had both taken advantage of their Liminal status to just toss on induction crowns and let the Machine handle the rest. We didn’t have that advantage for Mal and Rossck. Which meant I had to drag Mal away from my sword to fiddle with his settings in a painstaking, annoying as fuck way. I ended up simming a green field and then asking Mal questions. Did he feel this? That? The other thing? Then I’d adjust the inputs, alter how the induction crown was sucking up data from his brain, then ask him the questions.

The two hardest parts were Mal’s feet – which were so alien from my perspective that it took a lot of forehead sweating and headaches to get them to get simmed properly – and Rossck’s tail. Not the simming, that was dirt simple. No, it was adjusting the induction helmet so that when his nerve impulses would trigger a tail wriggle, the helmet would shut it down before it got to the actual tail. If he thrashed the tail while we were tanked and tubed, he could swim through the acceleration gell in his sleep and ... who the fuck knows!

I didn’t want to risk him yanking out the tubes and wires and shit and slowly starving in a sim without being any the fucking wiser.

Finally, Mal and Rossck were set up. The ship was prepped.

And Mal had a report.

REPORT

“So,” Mal said, as we all perched around him. His fingers rested on my sword. “This sword has been in a lot of places. The computer log has a locational tracking system that pings any comptech it gets nearby.” He smiled at me. “From what I’ve pieced together, it’s been up and down the Chain in its entirety at least once, though it has mostly circulated in the inner chain – the space between Eudaimonia and Gem. It spent a great deal of time in what we now call the Dead Zone, the former home of the Republique.” He sighed. “But the last registered location it was on before it’s discover in Stumble ... is We Made It.”

“What kind of a name is-” I gasped like I’d gotten punched in the stomach.

“It only makes sense,” Techne said, nodding. “Where else would a wisened old Liminal Master go but the antechamber to the Home system?”

I nodded. We Made It. The name, the sentence, had been uttered by the first human to set foot under an alien sky. Their name, their face, their everything had been lost. But that name stuck around, echoing to the modern day. It was System 2 on the Chain.

“How did it get from two to nine hundred and ninety nine?” Rossck asked.

“We jumped from Gem to Eudaimonia,” Mal said, shrugging.

Rossck snorted. He sounded less than convinced.

“Do we know anything about where in We Made It it was found?” Techne asked.

“Yes!” Mal rubbed his palms together. “Each bit of metadata I collected could be unpacked. Now, most of it is gibberish. It’s all data designed to communicate with other bits of tech that are thousands of years out of date, or built hundreds of jumps away. But there are certain code structures that we’re taught to recognize, because they’re Domain era. That architecture is the cleanest, as it is usually designed by Machines or their emissaries.”

“So, it came from a Domain ship?” I asked.

“A singleship, if I don’t miss my guess,” Mal said.

“What’s a singleship?” I asked.

“The Domain built big, and that was impressive,” Mal said. “The Sunsphere in Niven, for example. But it also built small, and that was usually more impressive.” He grinned. “Singleships are the size of a shuttle, but have a spindrive more powerful than even the most advanced worldkiller these days. They’re like this corvette, but several steps up the technological ladder.” He patted the hull beneath him with a loving smile.

“Is Wotan even alive, though?” Rossck asked as Techne stood and stretched.

“All the legends say he went into relativistic exile,” Techne said, her voice confident. “Stepped onto his ship and accelerated so far and so fast that time slowed to a crawl for him. He’s alive.”

I nodded. “And we’re going to find him. Once we get into We Made It, Mal, can you use the ... code greeblies in my sword to, I dunno, ping him?”

Mal chuckled. “A singleship, according to the legendary technical specifications, harnesses the same energies that created the universe for its drive,” he said. “If he’s still within a hundred lightyears of We Made It, we’ll spot him.” He sighed. “The problem is ... if he accelerated away from We Made It, he really could be lightyears away. In which case...”

“In which case,” I said, firmly. “We head to Home and ... I become a Liminal Knight.” I closed my eyes. “And then I find Thale and...” I trailed off, my throat tightening.

The silence that stretched was long.

“What do you want to ask Hohmann anyway?” Rossck rumbled.

I breathed out a slow sigh. My eyes opened. “The Emperor talked about what it was that the Hegemony was made to fight. Wotan Hohmann was the first Emperor’s friend for years. If anyone knows what that is, what darkness the Hegemony was supposedly made to stop, he’d know.” I gulped. “W-What if ... what if the Emperor wasn’t lying? What if he was right? What if ... all that horrible stuff was made to ... was...” I trailed off.

Techne reached out and squeezed my shoulder. “It’s never right, Venn. Never.”

I smiled at her.

But still, that core of worry gnawed at my gut. Chewing. Nibbling. Grumbling.

PARADISE

For a fleeting moment, I fucking panicked.

I knew that when I opened my eyes, I’d be in some horrible freak show nightmare dimension, dredged from my every worst thought. It’d be all flesh and moaning and me getting screwed silly by brooding bad boys and everyone in the Tiamat’s crew would be there and it’d be literally the worst fucking thing in the universe.

But then I popped my eyes open and breathed a sigh of relief. The simulation I’d cobbled together, that I’d willed into being using my Liminal Knight powers, looked perfectly normal. There was a large forest, with a cottage on a hill in the distance. The sky was a warm blue, dusted here and there with white streaks of clouds, and a warm Goldilocks sun shone overhead. Two moons hung in the air, faintly visible as a green and blue disk, shaded and nearly invisible in the sunlight. The air smelled grassy and clean.

I turned around.

And there was Techne, Rossck, and Mal all looking at me with wide eyes.

“What?” I asked.

Breeze tingled between my legs.

And I noticed that they were all buckass naked too.

“Ahhhhhhhg!” I flung myself to the side like there was a grenade skittering infront of me. I pressed my back to a tree and looked down at myself. Yup. Completely frigging naked. I wanted to scream. I put my hands over my face and spoke, muffled: “I’msosorry!”

“Eh,” Rossck said, his voice carrying around the tree. “It’s not like I’ve never seen a naked chick before.” He let out a quiet, happy hiss and I could picture him stretching and flexing and uhhhh. Uhhhhhhhh! Argh. I wasn’t a virgin anymore! Why did this still freak me the fuck out? Maybe it was because Mal and Rossck were fucking ... they were ... they ... I ... argh!

Techne stuck her head around the tree and grinned at me. “Wanna check and see if the cabin’s got clothes while the boys explore the forest?” she murmured.

“Godyes,” I whispered.

SETTLING IN

We did find clothes in the cabin. And after a few tentative tries, I found that if I meditated and called upon my machine, I could make a cabin for each of us. Honestly, the hard part wasn’t accepting that we were in a paradise forest, with warm lakes, fresh water, and banquet meals that came from nowhere. The hard part was remembering that we were actually on a stealth ship – that it was soaring towards Eudaimonia’s sun at an ever increasing clip. Since we were in the tanks, all I needed to do was meditate to create a physical interaface for Mal in his cabin, and Mal could sling himself in and give the commands, and the interface would ping it to the ship’s tech, and the ship would do as it would.

Mal, being Mal, was ... fucking ... stoked.

“This is amazing,” he said, shaking his head. “If we could replicate this tech for every Sundiver on the Chain, then space travel would ... it’d be revolutionized. Hell, just from a combat perspective, we have an advantage that you cannot beat! We’re able to hit full acceleration without taking the agrav generators off shield duty! Do you know what that means?” He beamed at me.

“Uh, we win?” I hazarded, leaning up against the hard metal and curved wood of the interface that he had specified.

Mal slapped his feet on the dash, gripping it so he could drag himself to a slightly more upright seated position. “We win, Venn. And that’s even before you take into account the torpedo subsystem. I’ve been digging around, did you know the probe socket is actually multipurpose? I’ve been thinking, if I dig up the old schematics for an X-ray laser emitter and socket it in, then we’ll have...” He waved his hand, like he expected me to finish the sentence. I chewed my lip.

“Uh ... shooty probes?”

“Drones,” Rossck said, walking past the front door of Mal’s cabin. He was shirtless and had a simulated buck deer over his shoulder. Blood smeared on his hands and his chest and he walked with a causal, effortless strength, his tail snapping from side to side. He looked right at me as he stepped past the view of the door. As he left, I ducked my head forward, not even remembering to point out that we had frigging simulated banquets, he didn’t have to go hunting.

God. Had to admit.

Got me kind of ... uh...

Uhhh.

Of the three, Techne settled in slowest. She paced a lot. Grumble sometimes. Kicked at rocks. I pinned her down after we did the dive into the Primary and emerged, the Tiamat II’s ice armor sheeted away and her hull scorched by the time inside of the heart of a star. Her slipdrive meant we had jumped at least ten systems in a go, and Mal and Rossck were both focused on seeing what they could fix and fiddle with while still in the simstim. Techne, meanwhile, sat on a rock and glowered at the lake we’d put near the cabins. Well. That I had put near the cabins.

I walked up behind her, my hands clasped behind my back. “Everything okay, Techne?”

“Yeah,” she said. Then. “No.”

“Is it the ship?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. Then, again. “No. I mean. Kind of. Listen, Venn, I didn’t become a sundiver because I liked parks. I like spaceships. I like walking around inside their guts and fixing shit with my hands, not teleoperated drones.” Her fingers clenched, but I noticed that she was still glaring out at the lake. Her hands slid along her chrome thighs and she didn’t meet my eyes as I walked up and set my butt down beside her on the rock. My thigh and her brushed, and she withdrew.

“Okay, and what’s the real real reason?” I asked. “Cause, I could fucking sim a ship for you. Fuck, I could patch you into a drone and-”

Techne shook her head.

“What?” I scowled at her. “Are you jealous of my powers?”

“No!” Techne snapped, glaring at me. But I could see she was lying about something.

“Scared?” I asked.

“No,” Techne said again, her voice growing growly and low. She pushed herself off the rock and stood, starting to pace away from me. But I got the feeling that either or maybe both of those no’s might have been like her yeahs. Reversed and flipped upside down. I stood up and followed after her.

“What is it, then?” I asked. “You jumped the whole Chain to get me, to rescue me and ... and now you’re not able to say a straight thing to my face?” I grabbed her shoulder. Techne spun.

“I’m jealous of Thale!” she snapped.

I blinked at her.

THICK

“Cause ... of Adoran?” I asked, my brow furrowing.

Techne looked up to the heavens. “Jesus Christ, Venn!” she said. “I’ve barely seen the blond bastard. You cannot be this densely heterosexual, can you?” She asked.

“Course not!” I said, defensively. “I’m not even ... I...” I blinked at her.

Oh.

Oh.

“Oh,” I said.

Techne shook her head and stomped off.

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It took me a hard reboot – a good five seconds – before my brain started working again. I hurried after Techne and marveled at this. For years back on Stumble, Techne had been the mysterious and alluring girl in the second story of Miss Giddy’s House of Ill Repute and Licentiousness. I’d sometimes imagined being with her. On the nights where men were exceptionally coarse and crude and ugly and hairy. But now it felt like someone had dropped a solid chunk of Stuff that Worked in my hands ... after I’d gotten a damned river of mana and never needed to worry about portions or credits again in my entire frigging life.

I had Thale. I had Adoran, even.

But...

I hurried after Techne. “Wait, wait!” I said.

“What?” Techne asked, turning to face me. She saw my flushed face and sighed. “I’m not mad at you, Venn. I’m mad at myself. I’m, what, a century, two?” She shook her head. “I’m a professional, I shouldn’t be this stupid.”

I flushed. “What, falling head over heels for some eighteen year old Stumble-”

She snorted. “No, getting jealous,” she said, quietly. “You’re clearly poly enough for Thale and Adoran. If you ... if we are gonna work, then the fastest way for me to kill it is jealousy and anger.” She put her hand to her face, rubbing it. “And I’m fucking it up by ... storming off, fuck. Fuck. I’m sorry.”

I sighed, slightly. “I get the impulse, ya know?”

“What, running?” Techne asked. Her eyes were glimmering with whatever she used for tears. Her lips skinned back, showing teeth. It was an almost pained expression.

“Yeah,” I said, grinning back at her. Techne’s smile grew less pained. I gulped. My stomach felt full of butterflies and I half wanted to step back and let them out with dumb words. But ... I wasn’t a virgin anymore. Was I? I slid an arm around Techne’s neck and drew her in close and planted a soft, warm kiss right on her mouth.

KISSING CHROME

Kissing Techne had a bite to it. Her lips were soft rubber, and her body wasn’t yielding like Thale’s was – and Thale was essentially made of hardened muscle and scar. I was perpetually aware of the fact that Techne wasn’t your average human. Of course, that just made it more sweeter. When our tongues met, I could feel the tiny articulations worked into her, and they nipped playfully against my tongue as she reached back and cupped my ass. Her fingers gripped me and she held me closer still. Soon, my lungs burned.

Simulated kissing.

Real heart hammer.

I drew my mouth back and Teche breathed out. She didn’t need it, but her body was built to do it – even here. Even in a fake world. “Damn, girl,” she whispered. “You’ve practiced that.”

I grinned shyly at her. “Thanks,” I said. “I, uh ... I’ve kissed, uh, Thale a lot. And Adoran some. Well. Um. Adoran’s, uh, monster body.”

“Monster body?” Techne whispered.

“Uhhh-”

Techne’s grip grew tighter and she drew me in closer and her voice was a quiet, playful growl. “Oh, you’re not getting away without telling me what that is!” Her eyes sparkled. “Monster body. Tell me about your monster himbo.”

“What the flying fuck is a himbo!?” I asked.

She chuckled, quietly. “I’ll explain later. Tell.”

I giggled, a little shy and a little quiet, and then focused. I tried to reconstruct exactly what Adoran had looked like – the form that my subconscious had constructed for Adoran. The sleek, greyhound body. The long head. The sixform eyes. The furred body. The long, spined tail. The sharp talons and teeth. Teche whistled, slowly. “Way better than the blond boy,” she murmured. “Think you can convince him to go in for body modding?”

I elbowed her.

“Still,” she said. “A little tame, all things considered.

I snortspluttered.

“I’m serious!” Techne said. “I’ve been with men and women that don’t even have spines. Or DNA.” She grinned. “Human is a broad term these days, and you haven’t really been with a lover until you’ve been with a polypsporine in the nerve oceans of Daedalus.”

My cheeks flushed and I ducked my head forward. “J-Jesus...”

Techne shook her head and let out a slow sigh. “Course, now, I’m remembering how much fucking younger you are than me,” she muttered. “Great.”

I elbowed her again. “I’m not that much younger,” I said.

“You’re eighteen and I’m nearly two centuries,” Techne said. “More, actually, I kinda lose track.”

I blushed. “Well...” I kicked at the floor. “We can see where we go? There’s ... no rush. Right?”

Techne smiled at me. “Yeah.”

GOING

The rush to Eudaimonia skipped us a lot of the Chain.

The Tiamat II let us skip even more. But it didn’t mean we didn’t need to stop from time to time. When I dreamed, I dreamed of Thale, and we didn’t speak of what separated us. He held me and I held him and we tried to not think of the stars between us.

But when I was awake, I started to walk beneath alien skies once more.

On Diaphorus, Mal and I drove a sheetsled across the vast, artificial glacier that capped the still glowing nuclear reactors on the northern continents, chased each step of the way by whip-spiders and drones sent out by the Warren Kings. I sheered off the sense whips of a dozen spiders before we finally reached where the Tiamat II had landed for reicing, where Rossck manned the X-ray lasers. They scythed across the glacier, sending up shooting gouts of flash vaped ice and snow, more alarming and shocking than actually deadly. The Warren Kings tried to crash the ice beneath us, but we took off with a roar of RCS thrusters and a knife narrow thread of antimatter exhaust.

In the fractured sky of Kataclyzm, we wove through the thriving shard-cities that orbited around the glowing mantle and cherry red core of the dead world. The chatter of a thousand different tongues swept over our ship and we marveled at the continent sized adverts for new sundiver components and advanced polymers spun out by the Kultos, the alchemists of the polar fortress. Here, we had to evade Hegemonic bounty hunters by stealthing our ship, quieting our emissions, and floating among rock and rubble, while the four of us went crazy without the sim-stim to escape into. In the end, the high speed orbital battle with a Hegemonic skiff was a relief, even if we nearly burned out the clavegun ammo replicators shooting down a dumbfire torpedo before it smashed into a shard-city, killing millions.