With all the Leaper activity outside there was nothing else to do but sit and think. So Rene did just that. But the more he thought, the worse things seemed to get.

The Fleet had no idea what they were walking into. There were entire nations of these humanoid monsters out here, and all of them made the Amits look like cuddly pets in comparison. He had to warn them. No one else could. His entire platoon and all of Mound 13’s scientists were gone. He alone could forestall disaster and avert the coming slaughter.

If only he could make the long trek home. But that would mean days if not weeks of moving through enemy-infested territory. Untold thousands of Leapers stood between him and the edge of the world as the Fleet understood it.

Even if he did warn the Fleet in time, there was no guarantee that they could withstand the world-altering forces he had encountered out here. If the Vitalus was a real being, a demon from the ancient world, then there was one thing which could rival its power.

The Divine Engine.

But that old heap was now rusting under the suns all the way back at Mound Euler. Besides, something inside it had given out, a malfunction maybe. Rene wasn’t a qualified Antiquarian, so he couldn’t even begin to guess how to get the thing working again.

If I’d had an ounce of sense in me back then, I would’ve walked that hulk back to the Fleet where brighter minds than mind could get more use out of it, Rene thought bitterly. He had thrown away the most significant scientific and historical find in living history on a pointless gesture of vengeance. Granted, he’d wiped out an entire omega-class mound singlehandedly, but if the eggheads back home had been able to piece the damned thing together…

Anyway, it was no use crying over spilt jelly now. His mind switched to his more immediate problems. He had less than three days before he ran out of fungicidal doses. His wounds were shallow but numerous. Once they became infested with parasitic molds, inflammation and fever would soon follow, ending with the condition they called the ‘baker’s shakes’, a rapid deterioration of motor functions in the afflicted areas.

Despair and his wavering sense of duty roiled within him. Any one of the aforementioned factors would have made his mission untenable. Put them all together like this, and it all seemed nigh impossible.

But the biggest problem of them all was squatting a few inches away from Rene, her yellowish eyes shining in the gloom.

You’ve done all that you can for her, above and beyond what is required of an officer of the Fleet, Rene told himself. Enemy combatants—human combatants—are supposed to be afforded the same level of care that a soldier could expect for himself. The issue was that he could barely fend for himself out here, much less babysit a prisoner who would like nothing better than to stick him when his back was turned.

She was a liability that he couldn’t afford. He would be doing himself and the Fleet a favor by ridding himself of that liability. Zildiz noticed him looking at her and thrust out her chin impudently. Rene felt a flash of irritation, his mind seizing on it like a drowning man clutching at anything to stay afloat.

The irritation grew into a bright, senseless rage. All at once he became convinced that she was the cause and culprit of all his suffering. Without her slowing him down at every turn, he would at least stand a chance of at making it back home, though with the onset of infections the trip would certainly cost him his life.

You first, Rene thought, eying Zildiz hatefully. He clenched his fists, fingernails digging white furrows into his palms. Zildiz shifted in her seat, the change in her body language slight but unmistakable. With a pang of guilt Rene realized that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

You’ve already killed once in the name of the greater good, Rene thought, and Lethway died for nothing that day. Can you honestly bear to make that choice again?

Rene cleared his throat and began noisily sorting through his gear, turning out the contents of his survival kit and cataloguing them again.

Zildiz did not relax in the slightest, watching closely as he took out the artefacts which he hadn’t been able to identify and examining them one by one.

He first looked over the obsidian slate. Rene turned it over in his hands and felt the smooth surface, pressing it firmly with his knuckles and rapping it. He found two curious holes in its side and stuck his pinky finger in them, felt cold nubs of metal inside. Nothing happened, so he put the slate down and started fiddling with the bowl that had a dirty great spike sticking out the center of it. He extended the tripod at its base and set it up, then waiting.

Again, nothing happened. Rene began to feel like seven kinds of idiot until he discovered a pair of rubbery cords dangling form the base of the tripod. They had three metal prongs sticking out of their ends. In a flash of inspiration Rene recalled the strange holes he had found in the slate. Carefully he fitted the pronged cords into the openings. There was a smooth click as the prongs found purchase and locked in, the cords matching the holes perfectly in diameter and shape. Rene stood back and looked on with bated breath, sure that he had just made a discovery of historic proportions.

Even Zildiz started taking an interest in his doings. After a moment, she said:

“You have no idea what these tools are for, do you?”

“Don’t be absurd,” Rene said haughtily, “This process just takes a while. You have to find the right harmonies,” he added in his most mysterious tone.

“Right harmonies for what, exactly?” she asked next, sounding skeptical.

At a loss for words, Rene folded his arms and grumpily retreated to his corner of the lair. But as he withdrew, Rene quite unintentionally allowed a beam of soft light from his spyhole to enter the darkened space, whereupon it happened to shine on the obsidian slate he’d laid on the floor. Suddenly the spiked bowl began to rotate on its tripod, compelled by some unseen force.

“For that!” Rene said happily. For once Zildiz had no biting remarks to add. They watched the bowl spin on its axis until Rene got bored and tried another experiment. He covered the spyhole with the palm of his hand. The rotations of the bowl immediately slowed and came to a stop. Rene then removed his hand, and after a moment it started to spin again. In addition, an inscription winked into existence on the upper left corner of the slate. Rene leaned in and read the following:

“EXOCOM network unavailable. Please try again later.”

Rene rubbed his chin and pondered the incomprehensible message. What on earth was a network? It sounded like some kind of fishing implement.

Zildiz on the other hand said nothing, but noted the clueless look on her captor’s face. She understood the message all too well. The tool was trying to contact someone or something out there. Like her, the device was was having problems raising a signal on the relevant frequencies. She reached for her magnetosynaptic organ and searched through her audible spectrum, going over it with a fine-toothed comb until she found the source of the only radio activity she could sense: the spinning bowl itself. She listened in and realized that it was transmitting a repeating message in some garbled parscode so dense with information she didn’t dare begin unravelling it.

She did, however, commit its frequency to her memory. It would come in handy if ever the Vitalus wished to track down the intended recipients of the message.

Meanwhile, Rene had thought of a new experiment. He picked up the hollow sphere and saw to his delight that it also had the same pair of holes at its bottom, identical to the ones on the spinning bowl. He transferred the cords and connected the slate to the sphere.

The device took a long time in responding, but Rene’s earlier success was fresh on his mind and he would not be discouraged. He even scraped away the sides of the spyhole until it was wide enough to put his arm through.

“More light means more power,” he hypothesized aloud. He also had another theory about the shapes of the artefacts themselves. A sphere, a bowl and a rectangle, all of them perfect geometric shapes. Coincidence? He thought not! There was a secret harmony of mathematics woven into all this sorcery, he could just feel it.

Rene’s faith was rewarded a few minutes later when the sphere started showing rings of soft blue fluorescence. But his amazement reached orgasmic proportions when the sphere sprouted a set of spiky legs and began to roll itself around the floor of the burrow, still attached to the slate.

“Initiating vitals scan. Please remain still,” it warbled in a young boy’s voice. Zildiz backed away from it as far as she could manage in the tight confines, treating it as if it were a poisonous viper. The blue circles began to emit strobing flashes of light that dazzled Rene’s eyes. It was rather like those chemical picture boxes where you had to sit stone-still for hours before the image could develop properly.

“Scan complete. Hullo there!” the sphere happily giggled, “How can I help?”

“Oh, wise spirit of the sphere,” Rene solemnly intoned, still intending to impress Zildiz with superiority of the Fleet’s ways, “Hear our prayers.”

“Aw, shucks,” said the sphere. It spoke with a whimsical twang that was like no accent Rene had ever heard, “You charmer, you! You can just call me E.X.A.R., since we’re friends. Or just plain Ex if you’re into that whole brevity thing.”

“Exar?” Rene repeated.

“Sure! Stands for Extravehicular Advisory Robot. My sole purpose is to keep you happy and healthy. Give us the sitrep, chief.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The lowdown, tailo. The long and the short of it.”

Rene looked to Zildiz for help but saw that she was too busy pressing herself against the sides of the burro and squirming like mad. It was the first time he’d ever seen her show fear, and he didn’t know what to make of it.

“Well see, your crash suit indicates that you’ve suffered some minor lacerations and contusions. Nothing major—though your brain wave patterns suggest that you ain’t been getting much sleep. Everything alright?”

“Erm. To be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Exar, no. Everything is not alright.”

The sphere uttered a sympathetic whistle and went the color of cream pastel.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?”

Zildiz moaned:

“It is a simulacrum! A silicate soul of the Betrayers!”

“Tranquilo, mes amigos,” Exar urged, “Let’s simmer down a spell and figure this out.”

He rolled about to face her and once more emitted the flashing pulses, Zildiz covering her face with her hands and letting out a frightened shriek.

“Okeydokey,” Exar said briskly, “We need to get this lady over to a trauma center pronto. And I mean ASAP! We’re gonna need to fly her to a team of specialists who can surgically remove that parasite that’s latched onto her.”

“You know someone who can do that?” Rene said in disbelief.

“Of course! Exodus Industries has hardened bases all over this rock, fully equipped and staffed. We’ll have your lady friend up and running in no time.”

“And you can take us to one of those bases?”

“You kidding? We’ll be cruising first class in an intersystem shuttle in two shakes of a dog’s whiskers! Heck, I’m already hailing our ride.”

Rene hopes flared into life. The gods were real, in a moment the spirit of the sphere would summon them forth!