I sprinted down the hallway and into the stairwell. It was ten flights to the ground floor, but waiting for the elevator would get me killed, so I ran as quickly as I could without crashing into any of the corners. I was one flight down when the entire stairwell filled with the clanking sound of spectrademon’s mechanical legs. Terror flowed through me, stronger than anything I’d felt since that tiny frigid moonlet, but I was so focused on each individual moment that I could barely feel it. What I wouldn’t have given to have Miri at my side in that stairwell. Against all odds, I didn’t take a blaster bolt to the back, either because of my own quick reflexes or else because the spectrademons could barely maneuver their limbs in the tight space.
By the time I got to the bottom of the stairwell, every muscle in my legs was sore as hell. I burst out into the entrance hall of the conning tower, arriving in the middle of a terrifying scene. Some spectrademons had beaten me to the ground floor and were currently in the process of taking control of the building, using their agony rifles to shepherd the civilians up against the wall. I saw the blaster-riddled corpses of the security guards who had tried to fight, and my anger came suddenly surging back.
“Hey, fuckheads!” I screamed, grasping the Waterspindle in both hands. “If you’re looking for the Emissary, they’re right HERE!”
The Waterspindle flared to life, and this time it was so powerful that the pulse could be seen as a distortion in the air. Even the civilians around flinched back at the psychic impact, and the spectrademons did something I didn’t even know they were capable of; they panicked and ran. The sight of the spectrademons turning around and fleeing in a disorderly mob stunned me for a moment. I once again thought to myself: what the hell was the Waterspindle capable of?
“Get out of here, now!” I said. There would be time for thinking later. “I don’t know how long they’ll be gone for! Go! Go!”
The Waterspindle warmed slightly, and what should have by all rights been a panicked stampede instead formed into a quick and orderly flow, splitting itself evenly across the half a dozen exits from the room with only a low hum of nervousness. I immediately went to one of the back exits and started pushing through the crowd, knowing that I’d only bought myself a little bit of time. As the crowd made its way out onto the open ground of the autoplex spaceport, I discovered more chaos had already begun to take root. A few of the spectrademons had run out there when the Waterspindle hit them. Enough people knew what a spectrademon looked like to start panicking, and that panic spread like a bad smell. I just kept my hold on the Waterspindle, knowing that an unconstrained panic would make an already bad situation vastly, vastly worse.
Drawn by the sense of order, or by something else, more and more people joined the crowd. To their credit, we made it all the way to the squat little building that contained the main elevator shaft down into the body of the autoplex before something inevitably went wrong. The crowd stopped dead; you could feel it happen, the shockwave of the sudden stop moving backwards through the mass. Then came the voice.
“Nobody. Will. Leave. This. Roof. Until. The. Vermin. Is. Turned. Over.”
The crowd tried to turn around, but it was too late. There were more spectrademons behind; we’d been corralled without even realizing it. The people around me started to lose their cool, yelling that they couldn’t do this, that they were going to start shooting, where were they going to go? And yet I was still perfectly calm. Some of it might have been that odd sense of flow I’d felt before. Some if it might have been the comforting presence of the Waterspindle. Either way, I was more pissed than anything else, pissed that somebody was going to get hurt because of me.
I moved through the crowd far more easily than I should have been able to, as people moved out of my way without even needing to be asked. There was a single spectrademon warding the door that led to the elevators. It made sense; the way down was a natural chokepoint, whereas behind us was mostly open space with dozens of ways in or out. The lone spectrademon already looked distracted and overwhelmed, its agony rifle sweeping back and forth, occasionally swinging around so it could beat back a member of the crowd with the butt of the weapon. If that one spectrademon went, there would be nothing stopping them.
I took the Waterspindle in both hands, drawing on it for strength as I breathed in, then out. I was going to have to fight this thing. I was probably going to have to kill it, too. But one look around told me exactly how important it was that I did; either the crowd would start a press, or they’d attack the spectrademons and get themselves shot. I moved a little closer to the chokepoint, until I was about twenty-five feet from the spectrademon. Then I leapt for it.
The spectrademon saw me just after I left the ground. It raised its agony rifle, but too slow. I, meanwhile, had aimed too high and nearly went right over its head, only stopping myself by grabbing onto its huge, hunched back. The spectrademon began to thrash wildly in an attempt to get me off of its back, to little success. My claw sheathes burst with sparks as I punched them into its back over and over and over again. As I stabbed, the bone-deep thrum of agony rifles firing filled the air; the spectrademons at the back of the crowd had seen me, and were carving a path through the crowd to get to me. At the front of the pack was the cambion, another bald human man with undefinable features mostly buried under layers of cybernetic augmentation, screaming orders and brandishing a blaster pistol.
Eventually I realized that the spectrademon had stopped moving. I slipped off of its back, wiping coconut-milk blood off of my face and trying to remember that by killing it, I’d saved more lives than I’d ended. I still felt like I was going to throw up. Maybe I could after I was no longer in mortal danger.
“Come on!” I said, as I turned and ran to the stairs. Behind me, with the spectrademon well and truly dead, the dam broke, and absolute chaos came with it. The crowd poured into a space much too small for it, spurred on by the spectrademons behind them.
I hit the stairs before the bulk of the crowd did and started going down. This time there were only three or four floors to go, and a mass of Architects, Liberates, and other people between me and the spectrademons, but that didn’t make it less scary. The data stick with the all-important information felt like it was burning a hole in my pocket.
Once I made it out onto the main floor of the autoplex, a new challenge raised its head. I knew that the Office of Public Security was down, a dozen floors down, but there was no time to check a map. Worse, as people fleeing the upper floors started to spill out into the rest of the autoplex, panic spread rapidly. People started calling security, and Architect guards began to meander upwards from the lower levels, along with more bystanders wondering what all the fuss was about. That made it even worse when the spectrademons showed up.
The autoplex guards, though armed, didn’t stand a chance against the spectrademons. They were simply too big, too well-trained, too well-armed, not to mention utterly fearless when not under the effects of the Waterspindle. By the time they pushed through the stairwell, I was already on the opposite end of the floor and sprinting away, but from what I heard later only a third of the squad of spectrademons stayed behind to utterly trounce the first wave of cops. The rest went after me.
The first sign that I was being pursued was the thumping sound of steel legs on tile echoing through the hallways of the autoplex close behind me. I needed to find a way down, but no matter how I searched, all that I found was more passageways, more doors. There was no panic, and my fear of impending death was only a low hiss in the back of my head. This wasn’t about panic. I just couldn’t find the way down no matter what I did or where I went. Even when I found a map—not that I could stand still long enough to read it for more than a handful of seconds—it didn’t help. I thought for a moment that I knew the way, but I’d end up running around in circles, every time.
Then I hit a dead end. It was a small balcony or plaza, sandwiched between two different bureaucratic departments, overlooking the titanic central atrium of the autoplex. There hadn’t been a junction for at least a hundred feet, and the sound of spectrademons was closer than it had been since the first stairwell. No time to turn around. They weren’t going to parlay. The only way out, besides the way I’d come in, was out over the railing and into the open air. I pushed myself against the railing, frantically looking around for some method of escape. Even indoors, the chlorine saturating the air formed a thin haze, enough to turn the deepest parts of the atrium a faint green.
But there was a way out. The floor directly below the one I was on was recessed, as was the one below it. But three floors down, the edge of the platform extended about as far out as the platform I was on, meaning that if I dropped down, I could catch the railing with my arms and pull myself over. Assuming that I didn’t break my arms or slip even a little, in which case I would plummet to my death.
But it wasn’t like I had a choice, so I started climbing over. I was standing on the far side of the railing, the shadows of the spectrademons visible around the corner the way I’d come, when I remembered that I had wings. Would they be enough to slow me down? I figured that was a probable no. I weakly fluttered my wings, nullifying some of my weight, then hopped off of the railing. At the same moment, the air was split open by a series of thunderous snaps, a stream of blaster bolts flying around me. I was already well on my way.
Sure enough, I wasn’t falling as quickly as I should have been. Hope bloomed in my chest, followed not long after by a searing pain in my side, just below my left wing joint. I flinched, which rapidly sent me spinning through the air. The railing rose up to catch me, or to impale me, or to miss me entirely as my fall suddenly accelerated. Oh fuck. I’m going to die.
The railing flew past me so quickly that it turned into a blur. Even still, I threw out my arm in one desperate hope, and by some absolute miracle, my hand caught on the uppermost rail and my fingers wrapped around the ceramic bar. I swung around on the pivot of my hand, slamming full-force into the railing. My entire body’s weight was suddenly on that one hand, the sudden shock of which felt like it was going to tear the arm out of its socket. My fingers instantly started to slip, and it looked like I was going to fall anyway… when two pairs of scaled Architectine arms grabbed me around the shoulders and heaved me up onto the platform.
“Are you alright?” one said.
“You’re lucky we were there or you wouldn’t have made it,” said the other.
I pointed at the upper level, gasping for breath and thankful that my Ariel hadn’t come off during the fall. “The Order is here. Spectrademons in the upper levels. You two need to get out of here.”
One said something that the Ariel didn’t translate. Probably profanity. The other suddenly became very distracted by something just below my left wing joint. “Your suit has a hole in it, alien. You should probably patch that up.”
My hand flew to the spot where I’d first felt the pain. Sure enough, my fingers found a ragged, torn edge, exposing bare carapace to the corrosive atmosphere. I had no idea when it might have torn like that. What I did know was that patching up a hole like that would require sitting still for several minutes that I didn’t have. “Thank you. I have a carapace, so I can deal with it later. Where’s the Department of Planetary Security? Specifically?”
The second Architect jutted their hand out across the atrium, pointing with all four fingers at an unremarkable section of walkway on the opposite side of the autoplex. “Around there, I think,” they said. “You’ll know you’re at the right place because all of the doors have people waiting to strip-search you.”
“Thanks!” I said, immediately running off in that direction.
My little stunt at the railing had bought me an enormous head-start against the spectrademons. Apparently, they weren’t as okay with the concept of jumping three stories down as I had been. Still, I knew that spectrademons were faster than they looked, so I didn’t let myself slow down in the slightest, no matter what my lungs and muscles tried to tell me. I finally managed to locate a stairwell and rush down several stories, then across a large open dining area and shopping center, then down several more flights. Whoever had built this autoplex had cared for style and panache far more than navigability.
Meanwhile, the chaos above me continued to grow. It felt like every security officer in the entire autoplex was making the trip upwards to fight against the Order. The sounds of blaster bolts, agony rifle blasts, and screams became constant. I was almost surprised, then, that there was still enough security standing by the entrance of the Department of Planetary Security to get up in my face about it.
“Ma’am, I’m going to need to see some kind of identification. As you can see, we are having a momentary security disruption, and as such we here at the Department of Planetary Security are being extra careful with our routine security procedures.”
Now, normally, I’m fine being called “ma’am.” Sure, it’s not technically my gender, but it’s close enough to count. But being said in that condescending way that only a pretentious wannabe-cop can turned a normally-neutral statement into something completely rage-inducing.
“I am Catherine Sierra, and my mom is Arana Karus!” I pulled the data stick from my pocket. “This data stick explains why, exactly, a bunch of fascist cyborgs are currently in the process of tearing your security to shreds. Now, if you’d be so kind as to take me to whoever is in charge here so I can show them this crucial evidence, I’d really appreciate it!”
The Waterspindle warmed slightly against my chest and the security guard looked mildly terrified. They retreated from the doorway but didn’t let me in, instead whispering into some kind of earpiece, presumably calling a higher-up. I began to understand Amanda’s superpower now.
When the guard returned, it was with a head slung low and a defeated sigh in their voice. “Come right this way.”
They (or rather he, as it turned out) led me into the Department of Planetary Security, moving quickly enough that I almost thought they were trying to shake me off their tail. Architects swarmed all around us, rushing between various computer terminals and desks and other bits of electronic equipment, engaging in half-panicked arguments in the hallways as we passed. We passed through another layer of security partway through, the guards taking my claw-sheaths, then a third layer after that before we reached what I could only describe as the nerve center.
It was a single huge room, built almost like an amphitheater, with a bowl-shaped floor ringed by rows of computer terminals. Architects with earpieces and calculators scurried back and forth relaying messages or fiddling with their machines. At the center of it all was a single colossal holo-display, centered on the orange star of the Bouwon-Phane system and showing its seven planets, as well as countless thousands of stations and spacecraft swarming around it like flies. Though it clearly served some practical purpose, it was obvious that the main point of something that huge was the awe factor.
You could tell which Architect was in charge purely based on his body language. He was short but stocky and strolled around like he owned the place, receiving reports and dispensing orders with unshakeable confidence. His uniform appeared at first to be mostly identical to the standard-issue of light pinkish vest and dark green pants, but it wasn’t, having a bit of gold trim around the seams, and a bolder, more reddish color to the vest.
“Director Antar,” the guard said, capturing Antar’s attention. “This is Catherine Sierra. They wanted to…” He trailed off, clearly hoping that anybody else would explain the situation in his place.
“Catherine Sierra? You’re Admiral Karus’s kid.” Antar made a guttural noise in the back of his throat. “And here I thought one of you was enough trouble.” He paused, then sheepishly added, “One of your family, that is, I have nothing against Emissaries. But what do you want?”
The comment about my species knocked me off-balance, slapping me across the face with a reminder that anti-Emissary prejudice wasn’t unique to the Order. It was a few seconds before I remembered what I was actually there for. “It’s about the Order, the ones causing problems in the upper levels.” I took out the datastick. “They were working with Corringer to interfere with your communications. I’m not enough of an expert to tell you exactly what was happening, but this should have the info.”
Antar made a clicking noise with his teeth, a noise I knew meant he was considering. Then, moving so quickly that I became momentarily worried he was going to attack me, he snapped the datastick out of my hand. “This had better be legitimate,” he said. “And if it isn’t, you had better have a very good explanation for why you’re wasting my time in the middle of an international incident.”
I shrugged. “It came from inside the same Corringer ship that the spectrademons were hiding on. If it doesn’t help you figure out what they’re doing here, it isn’t my fault.”
Antar made a noise indicating that he didn’t believe me, then turned away, handing the datastick off to a technician before going back to his business. I retreated to the back of the room and started patching up the hole in my suit. As long as I stayed there, they couldn’t ignore me completely, right?
Patching up the suit took a couple of minutes, but my carapace held until the patch was in place. Once that was done, I propped my back against the wall and proceeded to nearly collapse; fleeing the spectrademons had taken it out of me more than I’d expected. Part of me wanted to take a nap there and then. The other part of me was still wildly stressed out, so ready for the spectrademons to arrive that I could nearly hear the sound of blaster bolts breaking down the doors. So instead I opened up my Ariel and started sending out messages. First priority was finding out what had happened to Quinn; the last time I’d seen him was back in the tower, when we were surrounded by spectrademons.
I didn’t wait for Quinn to respond before messaging everyone else. Amanda and Steph were both in one of the legal offices, well below the center of the fighting. When Miri sent a message saying that she’d gotten off of the elevator she was on when the first shots were fired, the relief was so palpable that I felt lightheaded. It was a while before I finally got a message from Quinn, releasing the vice on my chest. His first reaction had apparently been to play dead, which worked for long enough that the spectrademons eventually got distracted, allowing him to then run away and hide in a storage closet. Several minutes later, once he was sure the Order had well and truly moved on, he escaped from the tower and found a window cleaner’s platform on the edge of the autoplex, which he then borrowed in order to break in through a window a handful of floors down.
I’ll admit that that one made me laugh a little. But if it meant that Quinn was alive, any amount of shenanigans would be worth it, as I was sure to inform him in a series of extremely honest texts. I barely had the time to calm down from that moment of relief when a voice broke through the general hubbub of the nerve center.
My Ariel failed to translate the first couple of shouts from Antar, but the third came across. “Emissary!” he bellowed, voice hot with anger. I stood up immediately and rushed across the room, timidly waiting for whatever abuse he was about to send my way for, presumably, giving him something worthless.
Antar was standing over the shoulder of one very hurried-looking technician, his arms folded stiffly behind his back as he looked down on her work. You could see the tendons in his jaw tightening. I pulled up behind him and waited for the ranting. He didn’t say anything; in fact, he seemed so intent on whatever the technician was doing that he didn’t even notice me standing behind him.
“Director… Antar?” I said. There was no response. “Director Antar?”
Several more seconds passed before Antar, without moving or making any other acknowledgement of my presence, spoke. “You were right,” he said. His voice was low, almost monotone. He sounded tired. “Technician, tell them what you told me.”
The technician cleared her throat, then cleared it again, then said, “This datastick contains the codes that Corringer has been using to gain access to our transmission servers, which they’ve been using to choose which incoming messages we are and are not allowed to see for the last ten days. They were also able to use that access to cause software malfunctions in the majority of our long-range sensors, and spoof the signals from the ones they couldn’t take down. And because we hired Corringer to upgrade our sensors and comms in the first place, we didn’t suspect anything.”
“We’ve been blind and deaf for days, and we didn’t even know it,” Antar said bitterly. “What’s the progress on undoing the damage?”
“Well, now that we know the codes they’ve been using, it was fairly easy to undo the blocks. We should be getting the first of the delayed transmissions in just a few—”
Three shrill, electronic beeps emerged from the speakers of the terminal. The technician fell silent, as did every Architect within hearing range of the sound.
“What does three beeps mean?”
“It’s a signal for a new incoming transmission,” said the technician.
“One beep means routine,” said Antar. “Two beeps means priority. Three beeps means emergency.”
And then, before I could ask any more questions, the computer terminal made three more beeps. Several seconds later, it made three more. Then again, now after only a couple of seconds. Then again. And again. Before long the computer was doing nothing but letting out a continuous stream of three-beep pulses, each one representing a new emergency transmission.
The technician turned to Antar, her voice quiet and unsteady. “We’re getting updated telescope data from the outer system right now. Should I send it to the holo-display?”
“Please do so,” Antar said.
With the endless drumbeat of the three-beep alarm in the background, the huge holo-display flickered, then began to change. At first, it was only minor things: planetoids and satellites jumping ahead in their orbits, various stations changing color to indicate something, though I had no idea what. Then the new dots started to appear in the middle part of the system. At first it was only a few, but more and more kept appearing, different sizes and colors until these strange dots swarmed the system like grains of sand tossed across a beach blanket.
Antar, in a growing panic, turned back to the technician. “What are those?”
“Well, according to the most recent emergency transmissions…” She leaned in closer to her terminal. When she spoke next, the overwhelming emotion had drained her voice of all inflection. “It’s the Fleet Secondary of the Order of the Pale Star. All of them.”
Oh shit
Yeah.
The next chapter is "The Admiral and the Artwork", by the by
This makes sense, since they're primarily going for the drive that lets you visit the Forbidden Zone and only secondarily completing the genocide
Oh. Shit.
Welp, I've already stayed up until 2am engrossed in reading, but this massive cliffhanger seems a good place to pause xD
Oh crap. Another attack on another planet...
Daaaaaaamnnnn
Really dialing this up to 11 aren't we?