A heavy silence hangs over the elevator as it lifts us toward Data Storage.
“We’re going to get him back,” I say, partly to break the quiet, and partly to repay Trix’s earlier kindness. I glance over, but her face is impassive beneath the wan yellow light. I can’t tell what she’s thinking, but after a few long seconds without a response, I continue: “It’s my fault, and you hate me, and that’s fine, but I won’t stop ’til he’s safe.”
Trix sighs. “You think talking about Mookie will make me forget why he’s gone?” She shakes her head. “I thought you didn’t like to sit around, telling stories and holding hands.”
Now it’s my turn to sigh. I don’t push any further.
The elevator stops, and when the doors part diffuse white light fills the car. Data Storage is the only part of the facility aboveground; the remainder rests beneath the surface of Miyuki the way an iceberg’s bulk hides beneath the water. That way, most staff on-site can avoid the freezing conditions outside, while the waste heat from MEPHISTO’s servers is easily offset.
Squid disembarks first and I follow, squinting until my eyes adjust. It’s a short, glass-walled corridor that wears a fine coating of crystalline ice. At the far end is an armored steel door marked with security clearance restrictions and dire warnings in four languages.
Squid tries the control panel beside the door: it boops an anguished tone and stays closed.
“Could you try knocking, Mars?”
I roll my eyes but laugh. “Yeah, sure.”
Squid moves aside, and I use my mind to grab hold of the door, feeling its mass as a single heavy point near the back of my skull. The metal frame screeches and twists as I tear the door off its hinges and yank it free. There’s a loud thud when I lower the door to the ground and another when I lean it against the glass wall beside the opening.
“Did you hear that?” Squid asks.
“The door?”
“No, listen.”
There’s a series of distant, irregular booms. I step over to the southern wall of the corridor and Trix joins me, pounding on the glass with the forearm of her exoskeleton to knock some of the ice loose. She unslings her rifle and looks down the scope, pointing it toward the distant field of wreckage that juts from the snow like so many headstones.
Overhead, a dozen white streaks slice through the sky—more ships coming into orbit, descending fast enough to break the sound barrier on their way to the surface.
“Another fleet incoming,” I say.
Trix tracks one of the trails, then hands me the rifle. “Not a fleet—ROTs.”
I raise the weapon, straining at first because Trix makes it look so easy. It takes me a few seconds to get one of the objects into focus through the rifle’s powerful scope: a Rapid-response Orbital Torpedo—colloquially known as a “drop-pod.” Basically the same as the pod that delivered Briggs’s envoy to Ergot, but designed to drop soldiers into battle without turning them into meat paste. The ROT is a black cylinder, tapered at both ends and marked with a single stripe of maroon. The air beneath it shimmers, distorted by its engine burning at full-reverse.
The far-off whine of the landing pods lowers in pitch, and they plunge into the snow in quick succession. A pod door blasts open on explosive bolts. At this distance, the soldier that steps out is a few pixels tall, just enough for me to see MEPHISTO colors and the glint of weaponry. The Legion has arrived—just like the doctor promised.
I hand the lasrifle back to Trix and enter Data Storage through the wrecked opening. It’s warm inside, a dry heat—like, zero percent humidity—and right away the skin on my face feels like it’s flaking. The temperature climbs as I pass the nearest cylindrical server stack, waves of heat emanating off it. There must be a hundred of them—black monoliths lined with flickering lights of inexplicable purpose. It’s loud in here surrounded by the machines, countless quiet whirrings combining to form a relentless din. Squid is already walking along the northern wall searching for an open console.
“Trix,” I call out, “keep an eye on those troops and let me know when they get close.”
I rush to the far end and join Squid’s search for a workstation that’s already on and aglow with hope.
“Squid, you better get Einri to send the Nova’s shuttle down for exfil.”
“Already done,” they say.
I find a console that’s powered up, standby light winking infrequently enough that I almost miss it. I put Ocho down beside the console and she walks into the lightkeys, bringing the interface to life. She complains when I grab her, but then I sit and put her in my lap, and she quickly settles. I find the search function and type Mookie Healerman. A green bar fills from left to right, and the console chimes.
It gives me a couple hundred results, each one less relevant than the last, until I’m scrolling past entries for people named “Marky” or “Hillman” and cursing under my breath.
“There’s nothing here,” I yell.
“What?” Squid says, running over to join me. They lean in over my shoulder. “What name did you use?”
“‘Mookie Healerman’?”
Squid looks at the screen and laughs. “He’s a medic, and his surname just happens to be ‘Healerman’?”
The pieces fall into place, and I say, “He changed his name when he went AWOL.”
“Precisely,” Squid says. “May I?”
I get out of the seat and hold onto Ocho, then drop her into Squid’s lap as they sit down and start to glide their fingers through the keys.
“How’s it looking out there?” I yell to Trix.
“About half are heading to the wreckage of the Mouse, the rest are marching this way.”
Another chime draws my eyes back to the console.
Squid opens the file for Cadwell Amos Moreland and scrolls past his basic details, looking to find out what they’ve done with him.
“He’s alive,” Squid says, “being held at a place called Homan Sphere.”
Before I need to ask, Squid drills down further into the files. I read over their shoulder, taking it all in. Homan Sphere: it’s not an official imperial prison, it’s not even a military prison—it’s MEPHISTO’s own facility; a designated black site, beyond-maximum security. The file doesn’t say who gets sent there, but from the language used I can guess: traitors, dissenters, anyone with the gall to stand against the empire. I doubt Mookie even got court-martialed before they disappeared him.
I point at the console to where the location coordinates glimmer. “Could you burst them to Einri?” I ask Squid, then I open a link with the AI: “What do you make of these coordinates?”
There’s a loud burst of static as Einri’s voice curves around from the far side of Miyuki’s moon where the Nova is hiding. Einri says, “Those coordinates are well beyond the limits of colonized space.”
“Fuck,” I say, “that’s what I thought.”
“Mars,” Trix yells, “I need you over here!”
“You go,” Squid says. “I’ll see what I can find about Pale.”
I unclip Waren’s cylinder from my belt and pass it to Squid.
“Mind Waren’s brain for me?”
“Of course,” Squid says.
“And while you’re in there, could you look for anything on Commander Briggs, the voidwitch program, or my father, Marius Teo?”
“Marius Teo,” Squid repeats, nodding.
I turn away and Ocho leaps off Squid’s lap to follow me. I scoop her up and put her back beside the console, but she mraows loudly, runs up to sit on my shoulder, and nuzzles my ear.
“Alright, alright,” I say. “But you better not get in the way, and you better not fucking die again.”
I join Trix in the corridor and she lowers her weapon.
“He’s alive,” I say. Her face stays blank—no smile, no tears, just the glow of daylight reflected in her eyes.
Out the window, a dozen Legionnaires are approaching, closing on the moat of slush around the facility.
I rest a hand on the glass wall and push outward with my mind. The wall shatters into a hundred razor shards that I hold floating. I spread them aside and step through the opening, my boots sinking into the black mud with a loud squelch. Trix follows, her weapon primed but pointed at the ground.
Seeing us emerge from the building, the Legionnaires rush forward like liquid, flowing into a semicircle with choreographed precision, each one pointing a ballistic carbine at me and Trix.
“This planet is a restricted area,” the troops say in unison—even their inflections match. “You are under arrest, by order of their Imperial Highness.”
One of the grunts steps forward and pushes back the hood on his jacket, revealing pink geometric scars. I recognize him, I’m sure of it—one of the bodychoppers who stood up for me on Aylett when MEPHISTO came, looking to take me back. He had a pincer for a hand back then, but that’s been replaced: a new hand made of metal and fresh gene-fabricated tissue. What else do they replace when they make their Legionnaires? Their names? Their memories? Are they still themselves?
On his own he says, “Come along quietly, or we will use lethal force.”
Trix lifts her weapon and shoots him in the chest. The piercing beam of white casts his face in deep shadows for an instant before he collapses to the ground, smoke and blood vapor drifting from the wound.
The other Legionnaires shift slightly, fingers tightening on triggers, but I snatch their weapons away before they can fire. I crush the guns and discard the pieces, then launch my knives of broken glass. Three more Legionnaires go down, clutching at wide red gashes splitting their throats. The rest don’t hesitate before rushing forward, drawing blades and laser sidearms.
Trix keeps firing as I lash out hard at the nearest three; they tumble back and others leap at me. I throw one aside and grab hold of two more. Their limbs wheel as they struggle in mid-air, and I squeeze, yelling loud as their reinforced skeletons twist and break. The bodies hit the slick mud underfoot with a wet thud.
The one I tossed aside moves like lightning, and the air is knocked from my lungs as he tackles me to the ground. I twist under him just in time to see Ocho attack, leaving deep scratches across the soldier’s scarred neck. She drops to the ground hissing, and before the grunt can react I lift him with one hand. With the other I tear into his stomach—the only soft spot on these cyborgs. I throw him away again, but this time his intestines trail out behind him to splat messily across the ground.
A Legionnaire smacks Trix’s gun from her hand, and she grabs hold, lifting him high with the help of her exoskeleton. She punches him in the face with her prosthetic fist until metal skull shows through the red. He’s still struggling, while two more soldiers close in behind Trix.
I reach back, remembering the tall, tapered heatsinks that emerge from the facility’s roof like spears. I break a dozen of these black metal barbs free, then scan my eyes over the melee, wrists flicking as I launch the spikes at each Legionnaire. The lengths of metal skewer the soldiers with two wet squicks—one as they pierce flesh, and the second as they spear into the mud. The soldiers are pinned to the ground like insects on display, except these ones are still squirming against their restraints. They die slowly, limbs going slack, blood bubbling from mouths. I don’t know how their hive mind works, but I hope the whole fucking Legion feels that pain.
While I catch my breath, Trix retrieves her lasrifle and points the scope in the direction of the Mouse—wreckage still smoldering, but now wearing a thin layer of snow.
“The others are coming this way,” she says.
“OK,” I say. “Einri, how far out are you?”
“ETA one minute.”
“Great, land at the northern side of the building and take off on my command.”
“I only take orders from Captain Squid,” Einri says.
“I don’t have time to argue. Just do it,” I say as I stalk back toward the facility.
“What are you planning, Mars?” Trix asks.
I step through the opening in the glass, and over my shoulder I say, “You need to take Pale to the shuttle, Trix; I’ll hold them off.”
She follows me inside, and I break a panel on the opposite side of the corridor as Einri lands the shuttle. It sits just beyond the ring of dark mud, door open and ramp extended.
Squid joins us in the corridor. “I found everything I could in MEPHISTO’s systems,” they say.
“Could you just burst the text to me? I don’t know if my membank could take the full digital records.”
“Done,” they say, and a new message icon blinks in my HUD.
“Thank you. Now, go get in the shuttle.”
Squid crosses one arm over the other. “What are you planning?”
“I asked the same thing,” Trix tells Squid.
Fuck; I’ve never had a good poker face.
I contemplate repeating the lie that I’m just going to hold the Legion off, but they deserve better. “Where Mookie’s being held, we won’t be able to just go and break him out; it’ll be too dangerous. But if I can get inside . . .”
“No,” Trix says. “You don’t deserve to make a heroic void-damned sacrifice.”
I grab her by the arm of her exo and Squid follows as I walk Trix out of the hallway, toward the shuttle. A cold breeze comes from the north, and even the ambient heat from the server farm isn’t enough to stop my teeth from chattering.
“I’m not sacrificing shit,” I say. “I’m going to get Mookie out, and I’m going to kill as many people as I have to in the process. This is my fuck-up, so now I’ll fix it.”
As we near the shuttle’s ramp Trix pulls free. “You don’t have to do this alone,” she says over the hum of the shuttle’s engines.
“I put him in this shit, not you; so go, Trix.”
“She was going to leave him,” Squid blurts out. Trix shoots them a glare colder than the wind. “Mars deserves to know,” they say.
Trix sighs. “Back on Aylett, I was going to leave, but then they caught us and beat Mookie half to death, and I stayed.” She laughs, a sad, broken sort of laugh. “I was bored before you showed up. I was gonna go back to merc-work—even had a meeting lined up.”
“Oh, Trix,” is all I can manage to say.
“He’s out there somewhere, and he doesn’t know I was going to leave him, he doesn’t know I don’t . . .
“I have to be the one that saves him; I owe him that much.”
“Listen, Trix; I still don’t know how I’m going to get Mookie out of there. I need you on the outside. I need someone hiding near the prison with a ship, ready to swoop in and rescue us when I send out a signal.”
“Damn it,” Trix says. “Alright.”
I scratch Ocho under the chin, then hold her out toward Squid. “Take Ocho and go,” I say. Ocho squirms and tries to scratch me with her back legs, but I hold her tight and press her to Squid’s shoulder until they get a grip on the little furball.
“Go now; don’t make me throw you in there.” I see the look on Trix’s face, and I can guess how hard it was for her to say all that, but we’re running out of time.
Squid starts up the ramp, and when Trix follows I steal a glance at Pale, still in his drug-induced slumber. Mookie first, then I’ll save you too; save you from whatever MEPHISTO did to you.
I take a moment’s respite from the cold inside the corridor. “Einri, you’ve got to launch the shuttle now and leave me behind.”
“Oh,” the AI says. “This is what you meant?”
“Yes.”
The noise of the shuttle’s engines climbs in pitch and volume as it lifts up off the ground. “I understand, ma’am. Good luck.” The shuttle hovers for a second, then blasts into the sky.
I walk out the other broken window and face south. The distant Legionnaires grow slowly as they run toward the facility. I figure I’ve got a couple of minutes before they reach me, so I open the data package Squid sent me.
Briggs’s file comes up: compared to what we found on Mookie, it’s an encyclopedia. I skip over the start of his career and stop at the point where he was given command over one half of MEPHISTO’s research and operations.
I don’t see any reference to myself, but there’s a whole file on my father—Marius Teo, a “brilliant geneticist,” and the only researcher to successfully develop telekinetic potential as part of PROJECT SALEM. There’s another entry under his name: PROJECT DIANUS. I open that and find schematics for brain augmentations and, scrolling down further, the weapon platform I found Pale trapped inside.
First Teo gave Briggs his brood of voidwitches, but that wasn’t enough. Briggs wanted a way to use the boys too, so my father gave him those machines.
I focus my eyes past the text and close the file; the Legionnaires have slowed about a hundred meters away. If they felt what I did to their buddies, they’ll be cautious.
I drop to my knees, raise my hands in the air, and form a dome of psychic will just large enough to shield me, in case they decide to kill first and get answers from my corpse.
The soldiers approach warily, weapons trained on my center of mass. When they reach the ring of sludge, a woman steps forward and lowers her weapon. “What is the meaning of this?”
I let out a loud sigh, hoping it sounds like one of exhaustion, rather than impatience. “Are you in charge?” I ask, though her uniform is indistinguishable from the rest.
“No one of us is in charge here; we all report to Commander Hamid. I ask again, what is the meaning of this? I will not ask a third time.”
“My name is Mars Xi. I’m responsible for the deaths of Commander Briggs and the people under his command. I also destroyed Miyuki’s defense fleet, wiped out the garrison stationed here, and killed your friends,” I say, motioning to the dead Legionnaires, arranged in macabre formation across the mud and snow. I drop my head so none of them can see me smirk behind the hair that falls over my face.
“Now that you’ve lured us here, are you planning to kill us too?” the woman asks.
“I’ve pushed myself too hard; I’m spent,” I lie. “I don’t want to die, so I’ll come along quietly.”
The woman doesn’t speak, but the collective mind of the Legion must come to some decision, because one of the troopers stows his gun and unclips a pair of hefty-looking restraints from his belt. He approaches carefully and I bring my shield down before he touches it.
“You better send me to the deepest pit in the fucking galaxy,” I say, “or you’ll learn what Briggs knew in his final moments.”
“And what is that?” the woman who is not in charge asks.
“I can’t be stopped.”
She smiles, and the movement is mimicked on the faces of the other Legionnaires, then something sharp pricks the side of my neck.
Before I can protest, my head swims and I drown in darkness.