Samuine grinned under his faceplate as he cut down another torchbearer marine. The pitiful defense mustered by the Auric’s crew was not worth the bead of sweat on his brow. He fired his wing jets and somersaulted over a portable barricade, sweeping his white vibrosword beneath him as he sailed over. Two more traitors felled without so much as the courtesy of knowing what severed them from their mortal coil. They seemed to hang in the air a moment, collapsing to the ground only when Samuine himself landed soundly on his feet.
Jolters kept up with him as best they could, but there was a palpable frustration about them Samuine found ironically entertaining. They’d gotten all heated off their smoky stimulants only to play catch up in the wake of a superior being’s advance. Perhaps he should have taken a pod all to himself and saved them the trouble. Everyone had made it on their own boarding trams, if they were meeting similar resistance then each of them would also enjoy the satisfaction of an easy win and a short day.
A heavy bulkhead door slammed closed in Samuine’s path guarded by a handful of brave defenders. Naval slugs fired into him and pelted his carapace in a song of harmless clicks and dings. With a dry laugh Samuine rolled his eyes, extended his energy lance from his right arm and leveled it at the door so foolishly blocking his way. Golden light bathed the corridor before a trio of charged shots streaked from his arm mounted weapon and met explosively with the vacsteel barrier.
The torchbearer guards briefly shed the ‘bearer’ moniker before plasma ordinance reduced them to charred ash, but the door they guarded held true save for black scorch-marks. Samuine frowned, his lance would need to cool before firing again, and another salvo may not do any more damage than the first. Bending his arm to point his energy lance up, the white-gold kartorim motioned for the jolters arriving behind him to handle the door in his way.
Black armored jolters passed around him, their slug guns hung from straps on their shoulders. In their hands they held breach bricks and coils of magma wire. They worked quickly to peel of the tape over the bricks adhesive patches and tack the magma wire in an arch over the door. Samuine tapped his foot impatiently. The status indicator blips for Fenrothyne and Thenrothyne began to blink, as the last jolter stepped backward slowly, trailing a detonator cable from the breach brick circuit.
“My lord you may wish to step back, these cables get hot,” the jolter advised as he passed Samuine.
“I’ll be fine. Proceed.” Samuine dismissed the jolter’s concerns. Inwardly he scoffed at the insinuation he needed to worry about it in the first place. The jolter set off the magma wire a second later. Black cables lit orange, then yellow, then white in a shower of sparks and sputtering metal. The arch of searing wire melted its way into the door until the metal was soft enough to slough into a puddle on the ground. The magma wire sank into what remained of the door as it collapsed into a mound of slag.
A change in the status indicators resting at the fringe of his vision soured the satisfaction brought by the felled barrier. Both of the Bolunds’ indicators started flickering a short while ago, Samuine assumed they were encountering what passed for response teams just as he was. Fenrothyne’s indicator darkening to a shade of warning yellow caused him to reconsider. There wasn’t anything on board that should, or could, cause that… right?
Samuine tabled the thought to the back of his mind as he strode through the molten archway cut from the blast door. The vault-like bay he entered was saturated by green light emanating from some sort of containment cylinder in the chamber’s center. No gunfire greeted him on his way in, even the alarms outside stayed there. It was almost quiet, save for the rumbling that permeated the Auric as it fought to accelerate with the Merriment shackled to its rear. Thenrothyne’s indicator was the next to go yellow. Samuine could dismiss Fenrothyne being injured as the result of his own headstrong ineptitude, but he could not do the same with his less foolish shadow. He stopped moving and tried to speak with Fenrothyne through his helm, bypassing the issues a similar exchange would have over low-net.
“Fenrothyne what is your status?” he could scarcely hide the irritation in his voice. Hypothetical excuses rolled across his mind, as much a way to mill through his frustration as it was a way to assure himself there wasn’t any real danger. ‘Oh sorry boss I tripped and blew up a fuel line’ ‘the darn boarding tram fell on me when I tried to pick it up’, Samuine could imagine any number of reasons why Fenrothyne could be getting himself hurt. His status indicator darkened to orange.
“That grey bastard! He blew up the wa-AAAAARRRRRRGHHHHH!!!” Fenrothyne managed a tiny bit of coherent speech before it devolved into screams. He sounded like he was in a hurricane. Samuine’s heart raced, he began to pace.
“Fenrothyne! What is going on?! Answer me!” Dread welled up in his chest. Fenrothyne’s indicator turned a deep red. This can’t be happening… why me? Why?! Samuine’s eyes darted around the room, searching for something to let out his anger on. What was this room, anyway? It was all bare vacsteel, nothing like the marble and gold the rest of ship had in spades. There weren’t many crew stations, just reinforced columns and braces. It was a vault to be sure, but for what?
The containment tube in the center of the room was the only logical answer, but why go to such lengths for… an Iyaethrum. Profaned, covered in mechanical add-ons and wires and radiating a sickly green instead of pure white light like it should have… but it was unmistakably an Iyaethrum. Nothing in Braem’s intel said anything about this, not even close. Illati’s indicator flickered yellow, pulling Samuine back to the task at hand.
“Illati what is your status?” He spoke with the urgency of a man interrupted during his time off duty. Illati answered first with heavy breaths, but she was off to a better start than Fenrothyne.
“Enemy kartorim neutralized… already let Merriment know… to get a cell... ready…” her words were labored, like she was having to work every word out with half her face numb. So there was an enemy kartorim after all, Samuine thought with a frown. At least it was dealt with.
“It looks like you managed to take out whatever got Fenro and Thenro,” Samuine observed clinically, “Good work. Which house are the grey ones again?” Samuine couldn’t be bothered to remember which colors belonged to every house and order beyond his training days. House Tyvess was too important to be on face to face terms with every fringe world’s handful of kartorim.
“Grey? What are you… talking about?” the incredulity of her response sent a shudder up Samuine’s spine. He turned to face the door way to the vault he occupied, noticing for the first time that none of the jolters had followed him in.
“Illati, what colors are on the torchbearer kartorim’s plate? Is it grey?” he spoke slow, ensuring each word was properly enunciated. The clamor of gunfire and shouting wafted in from beyond the vault, now clearly muffled by some technological means to keep this room isolated. He’d let himself get cornered.
“Blue… bronze… no grey.” Samuine inhaled sharply. He did not respond to her again, readied his sword and raised his shield. Standing in the smoldering entrance to the vault was a small, grey armored thing that wouldn’t have passed for a schoolchild’s drawing of a kartorim on a good day. It was riddled with wounds and scorch marks, its eyes glowed blue but lacked intensity. One eye lacked enough mimicked carapace to cover its edges and looked bigger than the other as a result. There was no arm shield, no energy lance, no colors, no symmetry. It wouldn’t have registered as a threat to him, even after Fenrothyne’s report, save for one crucial detail that made Samuine’s blood boil in his veins.
This thing before him was holding a black sword that belonged to his late friend Voy. How it had his sword, Samuine could only guess. It didn’t really matter. Samuine gunned his wing jets and launched toward the abomination before him. He would get that sword back, and then he would rip that grave-robbing miscreant into so many pieces he’d be invisible without a magnifying glass.
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Everything hurt. Voy had grown accustomed to his body being in a perpetual state of war with him over such offenses as ‘moving’ and ‘breathing’, but right now the compounding muscle exhaustion from exerting himself mingled with actual enemy inflicted injury and left him feeling especially afflicted. Adrenaline from earlier had somewhat run its course, and even the pelts and bruises left by the jolter’s naval slugs were beginning to smart.
“Archoseers are on standby,” Hembrandt explained over low-net comms, “If you can’t get the enemy kartorim out, hit the emergency switch on the storage cylinder. It will split the data and move it to the seers on another level of the ship.” Voy had received a crash-course on living data on his way to the vault.
There were two main things Hembrandt impressed upon him that Voy was still rolling around in his head as he limp-ran through the Auric Wind. The first was that this ‘living data’ was impossible to copy. Unlike normal data that never moved through computers and was instead copied and deleted to simulate the act, living data actually did move from one storage medium to the next. This made it extremely reliable for, among other things, authenticity. If you had something made of living data, you knew you had the real original thing.
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The second point was that it didn’t like to be stored on any readily available computer hardware. Whatever the data was made of, it preferred storage that mimicked the strange, non-euclidean hardware built by pre-thurgian humans. Failing that, it liked human nervous systems just fine. Thus the danger in touching it, the Iyaethrum rigged to hold the Darkmount’s command protocols was just itching for a human host mind to overwrite and use as a hard drive.
“What happens to the archoseers if I hit the panic switch?” Voy asked as he rounded the last corner before the vault. Hembrandt grumbled on the other end.
“They know what they signed on for, that isn’t your concern.” Gunfire hammered against Voy’s carapace, there was no cover here for him to exploit. Sword raised, Voy ground his teeth and forced his broken body to heed his will. His ankle crunched under his charge, his breaths were uneven as his left lung shuddered from the clotted gash in his side. He worked his sword through the air with both hands, recognizing the regions of his own body that the jolters were aiming for and keeping his blade swimming in the air between their slugs and his body.
“Answer the question admiral, I’ll decide what is and isn’t my concern,” Voy answered back as he crashed shoulder first into the nearest jolter. White mist rushed out of crumpled armor as the thurgian trooper fell backward and out of Voy’s way. The others rushed him now, his proximity made use of the slug guns too risky. He’d keep his word to himself and not kill them. Even as they stood against him, it was his duty to protect them. On this he would not compromise.
“They will give their lives to preserve the data we need to save the rest of mankind. Is that a good enough answer for you my lord?” Voy scowled behind his faceplate at the admiral’s derogatory use of the honorific. There was nothing unreasonable about wanting to understand the ramifications of his choices. His response was delayed a moment by the jolters he had yet to finish incapacitating.
“Sure is, thanks Fortheo,” Voy awarded himself a grin. He didn’t imagine the admiral expected him to remember his first name. Using the flat of his blade, Voy swatted aside the last jolter and acquainted him with the wall. At risk of inviting poor luck, Voy was feeling fairly confident about the battle so far. The situation was bad, but if he could handle that brute Fenrothyne without too much trouble, and the jolters, he might just be able to squeeze out a victory against these boarders. And if I can’t, it won’t be my problem for long ha-ha, Voy laughed to himself. Perhaps he’d lost more blood than he realized.
The vault’s door was gone, only a sludgy mess of molten vacsteel remained where it had been. Voy steeled himself for what lay on the other side. It wasn’t the jolters that necessitated his presence. Voy stepped through, and his heart caught in his throat immediately. There was only one other figure besides him, a kartorim he’d called friend before either of them were more than scared children ripped from their homes and lives.
Backlit by the green aura of the augmented Iyaethrum, Samuine in his white and gold carapace stood with his vibrosword pointed ahead and his pavis raised. He was huge! He had wings! Mechanical wings to be sure, Voy could see the heat shimmering from the metal feather clusters hiding the jump jets, but his friend had a proper carapace, angelic wings, stature… he’d made it. Voy wanted to drop his weapon and congratulate him, he wanted retract his carapace and meet his friend in an embrace, wanted to catch up on what adventures he’d surely been on, wanted to find out what life was like for the others who made it on ascension day.
Hanging on what he wanted nearly cost him. Samuine bellowed in rage at his sight, fired his jets and launched through the air at him, his sword already halfway through a killing blow. Voy fell to his knees and leaned back, Samuine’s sword passed less than an inch over his head. Fenrothyne had tried to kill him after learning who he was. What was to say Samuine was any different? A lot can happen in five years.
Samuine’s momentum bought Voy time, time he used to lurch forward into a hasty roll before popping up to his feet facing the direct he’d come from. Feather jets rotated and spewed hot fire to halt Samuine’s motion. With an additional series of bursts from one wing, Samuine pivoted before his feet hit the ground. He faced Voy again, weapons at the ready.
“Where did you get that sword!?” Samuine shouted at him, his helm eyes wide with rage. Voy tried to stay calm, to focus. Fenrothyne had gaps he could exploit. Samuine would too. Voy just had to find them.
“Die silently then!” Samuine fired his feather jets and charged through the air again, this time closer to Voy from the start. His white vibrosword caught Voy on the cheek as he ducked left, trailing a gash along his face as he flew past. Not deep enough for serious concern, but Voy felt the thin paper cut like sensation the blade left as it slid effortlessly through his armor and split the flesh beneath.
To survive, Voy would need to dodge or block every one of his strikes. All Samuine needed to be the victor was land one.
Memories flooded back to him, memories Voy tried to dismiss at first to focus on the task at hand. Samuine abandoned his airborne attacks and charged at him on foot, swinging his sword with murderous intent. Without thinking, Voy let his sword point fall down over his shoulder and perfectly intercepted Samuine’s leading attack. Both of them froze for a fraction of a second before Samuine growled and punched his left hand into Voy’s exposed chest and knocked him backward.
Another sword strike came hurtling in from over Samuine’s shoulder, a strike that would surely end Voy when it hit, only for Voy to act on instinct again. He swung his own sword down from overhead and crashed it over Samuine’s white blade, driving it down to the ground. Samuine’s eyes burned with indignant fury, Voy could scarcely believe he was alive. He wasn’t fast enough to be acting on reflex, it was like he knew how Samuine would move before each strike.
Then it clicked. It wasn’t precognition, and it wasn’t some sudden wellspring of talent Voy had been holding out on. Voy had sparred with Samuine for years, and as the memories of better days flickered in his mind so too did the muscle memory of those lighthearted bouts bubble up to the surface once more. A lot can happen in five years, but evidently not enough to change one’s subtle habits of motion.
Samuine yanked his sword back and delved into a flurry of blows, his anger driving reckless aggression. Blood burning and muscles fraying beneath his skin, Voy fought with every ounce of strength and will he could muster to match his oldest friend. He moved with frantic, exhausting precision, timing his guard to match with Samuine’s attacks. Gradually his guard wavered, and small cuts began to appear on his body where his parries were too slow. Voy’s blood gradually began to coat the white of Samuine’s sword.
The containment cylinder was behind him now and getting closer. Tacked onto the side of the tube was a small steel box with one single switch affixed in its center. Cables ran from the box into the tube itself, connected to the marred Iyaethrum. The panic switch that would close a circuit linking the archoseers on board to the Iyaethrum and draw the living data out of danger. A heavy blow crashed into Voy’s blade, but instead of pulling away for another follow up Samuine pressed into it, leaning into the strike to push Voy backward.
“Tell me, abomination, is that the sort of thing that made you?” Jeers came when he got tired. In the past that meant Voy was close to besting him, but that was before either ascended. Whatever twist of fate had left him a half-baked kartorim had not graced him with equivalent reflexes to his fully fledged counterparts, and Samuine was doubtlessly exceptional even among their kartorim peers.
Samuine shoved Voy backward and went to resume his frenzied assault. Voy thought of every match they’d ever had, ever practice session, every bit of childish horseplay. Adrenaline poured into his veins anew. Samuine was trying to kill him, it was time Voy started acting like it. Time congealed around him while he raised his black vibrosword. No longer clinging only to defense, Voy growled through his body’s pain-forged petitions for surrender and sprung at Samuine. He drew back his sword and made the blade parallel with the ground before jabbing it forward at Samuine’s chest.
Samuine’s eyes went wide as he rapidly redirected his attack into a parry, barely intercepting Voy’s own. Voy drew back his blade, swung it in an arc using the force of Samuine’s deflection and hammered it back at him from the side. It stopped short of its target, but not without tearing a chunk of white pseudo-metal from Samuine’s shield. Sentiment departed him, his mission, the torchbearers, the Apoctillon, none of it mattered on this island of time. Voy had only two options: win and live, or lose and die. Voy decided he would live. There was no alternative.
The scion of House Tyvess snarled and stepped backwards, increasingly on the defensive as Voy fell into rhythm. It was the training gym, it was the assessment center, it was a quarry with a moegon. More blows slipped past Samuine’s guard, more cries of furious disbelief followed them. Voy said nothing and thought little beyond his next move. Feather jets fired to launch Samuine backward and put distance between him and the resurgent Voy. The hooked blade end of Voy’s black vibrosword swung from below and met the wing, lodging itself into the machine and jerking Samuine back down, shredding the jet in the process. There was no escape, no reprieve. Samuine was off balance, his left wing was out, and Voy was winding up another strike. One good hit was all he needed, and this fight could end right here.
“Enough!” Samuine roared in defiance of a bout that confounded his sense of order. He leapt at Voy, his own vigor multiplied in an instant. Voy didn’t have time to return to the defense, his blade hung in the air before he swung. White metal slashed through the air faster than Voy could track, faster than he could react, and in a manner so far removed from human limitation that no memory of past battle applied. Samuine weaved his blade around Voy’s own, arresting the momentum of his attack instantly before changing its direction and speeding it up once more.
Voy barely saw when Samuine raised his sword up, slicing into Voy’s armpit and following through until Voy’s left arm was severed. Voy’s vision turned red and narrowed. Where once there had been an arm only an ocean of pain remained. He stumbled back, dropping his black blade with a metallic clang. A ruthless kick crashed into his chest and sent him tumbling backward. He crashed against the containment cylinder, glasteel chipped and shattered from his impact. More than ever before his body fought for the right to fail. His consciousness spilled onto the floor beside him from the wound that replaced his arm. Samuine’s armored foot slammed down on Voy’s chest, pressing the air from his lungs.
“I’m going to kill you,” Samuine pressed his foot down harder, Voy weakly fought to lift it off him with his right hand, “but first you’re going to tell me how you got that sword.” As little as he could Samuine eased his foot up to alloy Voy to speak.
“...it’s...mine…” Voy managed to croak. Samuine pressed his foot down harder. One of Voy’s ribs cracked.
“Liar! The owner of that blade died five years ago, he was a brother to me!” His foot raised and stomped down harder still. More ribs cracked. Organs ruptured. Samuine turned his gaze up to the green god-gem floating freely in the ruptured container. “Perhaps I’ll take something of yours then. Let’s see how you like it, thief.” Voy couldn’t move to reach the switch, he wasn’t sure he’d press it if he could. There was only one option left that might buy him a moment to act.
Voy retracted his helm to show his face. Samuine froze, his eyes wide.
“You… you’re not…” Samuine staggered backward, his helm eyes locked to Voy’s face. His voice trembled as he raised his hands up in front of him, “I… I almost…” Voy’s blood coated his white and gold gauntlets. Voy had his chance, with his last shred of will he reached up with his good hand and plucked the green Iyaethrum from the air behind him. The archoseers would not pay for his inability to stop Samuine, whatever consequence came from his failure was his to bear. Streaks of green light compressed and dove from the device in his hand and into his arm, swimming over his carapace in organic lines of green light before fading into nothing. The stone in his hand dimmed, the source of its light siphoned away into Voy’s own body.
Samuine reacted too slow, swatting with an open hand only after the Iyaethrum was fully drained of whatever anomaly it housed. The depleted crystal shattered against the vault wall, its pieces scattering on the floor in a sparkling mess. Voy slumped back against the ruined containment cylinder. His chest rose in irregular intervals. Samuine shook his head, unable to muster new anger at his defeated friend.
“What are you doing here with… with these traitors, Voy? What is going on?” The hostility Samuine had borne him only moments ago was gone. He dropped to one knee beside Voy, his voice heavy with sudden regret. Voy motioned to the belt he wore outside his carapace, too tired for unnecessary words. Gently Samuine reached into the pouch Voy pointed out, extracting a tube made of red and gold metal. On either end a red cap with the thurgian hawk. Samuine retracted his helm and and beheld the object in his hands. With a click he opened it producing the same yellowed scroll that had Voy’s orders on it, the words of Avaron himself. Samuine’s guilt grew until a single tear ran from his eye and down his cheek. He shook his head as he read.
“I don’t know what is going on I… I’m calling a retreat. We’ll leave. I’ll find out why this happened… so much death…” Samuine shook his head some more before clasping Voy’s good hand in his own. “Helm call later… once I have some answers. I… I am sorry, Voy. Please don’t die.” In the corner of Voy’s vision a small green blip flickered to life, and intuitively he knew it was an indicator of Samuine’s well being. He’d never handshake-linked with anyone before.
Samuine rose to his feet, re-extending his helm over his head. He turned to leave, looking back as he did before passing out of view. Voy let out a long breath as the world around him went dark.
