by Vic Davis
Breaker was unphased. “I’m not moping Pilgrim. I would hope that by now, you would know me better than that. There are some things I want you to see. I’m glad you are here too Chief Engineer. Your expertise might be very useful. We’ve set up a camp at the scene of the crime as you might say. We’ve found some stuff too.”
“What kind of stuff?” asked Pilgrim.
“I’d rather show you. Follow me.”
The streets and avenues of Privil’s Landing were still deserted. If any of the residents had returned to their dwellings, they were remaining out of sight thought Pilgrim. Quiz’s nomad horde had withdrawn almost immediately after the fighting had ceased. There had been a distinct unease in their attitudes towards the ways and customs of the city dwellers that bordered on disgust.
The group traveled in silence each member preoccupied with their own thoughts. As they approached their final destination, Breaker pointed with a tendril to a plaza up ahead. “The big building up there. That’s where the Council infiltration leaders were running their operations.”
They entered a plaza and Pilgrim halted. “This place looks very familiar somehow. I can’t place it exactly but—”
“One of these plazas looks much the same as the other,” signaled Stinky. “They are very deliberate about their city planning here. You’ll often find an open space and then a cluster of storehouses or other buildings that share a similar purpose. Indomitable had a lot more character.”
“No, it’s not that. Never mind.” replied Pilgrim starting forward again to keep up with the group. Breaker entered one of the large warehouses through a splintered pair of double doors that had obviously suffered some type of explosive impact; twisted flow and scattered rubble were strewn all around its entrance.
The interior of the building was just as battle scarred as the shattered doors: mounds of rubble surrounding a raised platform at the end of the main hall, fractured support pillars that hinted at structural instability, battered strange cages adorned with odd scales of flow and covered by the remains of a collapsed balcony.
Stinky was impressed. “There was some hard fighting here I would wager.”
Breaker winced. “Yes, and I was merely an observer. As I told you, Xodd broke in with its new mercenary company and strutted up to that wrecked platform and started taunting the Alphas. One of them immobilized everyone but Xodd and apparently a little twisted creature that possessed an unusual weapon that launched grenados on a spike or small lance. How they gained such immunity is a puzzle.”
“A little ovoid with a grenado launcher? You didn’t mention that before,” signaled Pilgrim immediately regretting the accusatory tone.
Breaker was obviously embarrassed. The emotional pain of losing Valor’s budding yet again had been difficult to shake. “Yes, well, I have been trying to sort out what happened and what really was going on here. There were two powerful Alphas here with Mesmer domination powers that seem to have done a scramble on me. I am also ashamed to admit that I bought Xodd’s cover story so easily. It didn’t seem possible that an inert and a general to boot would betray the council. That simply doesn’t happen. Defectors or deserters are not common.”
Pilgrim offered a face-saving question. “Could they have been another infiltration op working a different angle?”
“I don’t think so. The battle and this wreckage would suggest otherwise. Xodd seemed to genuinely regard the council as an enemy. The fact that it could completely negate the Alphas’ domination like you can, suggests that something unusual has happened. There are pieces of a puzzle here, but I can’t put them together. Come and take a look at these cages.”
They hovered over to the cages and Breaker pointed out the odd plates attached around their exteriors. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like flow that has been permeated with information similar to source but not quite: a pseudo-source. It reminds me a lot of you Pilgrim, when I first found you in Timathur, to be honest.”
Stinky ran a tendril over the surface of one of the plates. “I haven’t seen this type of thing in a very long time. It’s part of an artifact retrieved from a vault in the Great Desolation no doubt. I’m surprised that it maintained the integrity of its information after it was fractured. The Exiles’ craftsmanship was always impeccable though.”
Breaker cast a suspicious look. “I’ve pieced together a lot of your secret history on my own Chief Engineer. Do you want to elaborate on this?”
“Not particularly. You are no idiot so most of what you suspect is probably correct, but I’ll let Pilgrim fill you in when it gets the chance. The real question is what effect do those plates desire to manifest? What was their purpose?”
Pilgrim was amused by the invitation to play along with the theorizing. “Cages are meant to contain things and prevent their escape, So—”
“I sat in that cage for half a cycle and it didn’t feel like it was doing anything special. The haze, the numbness from the Alphas was much more disturbing,” interrupted Breaker.
“Have you climbed back inside and tried it out again?” asked Stinky who was now circling the two cages while trying to avoid the worst of the rubble from the collapsed balcony.
“No. It wasn’t the most pleasant experience but perhaps it would be the next logical step in an investigation.”
“No doubt,” chided Stinky softly. “I think I have an idea what this contraption is all about. But we should gather some more data.”
“Very well,” signaled Breaker. “It’s easily enough done. Valor’s clone did an efficient job cutting open the doors.”
Pilgrim saw the pain briefly resurface once again on Breaker’s form walls. The True Path commander hovered through the open access port on one of the cages and took up a position in the center of the cage. They all waited for Breaker to describe what it was feeling but no report came.
“Breaker, are you ok there?” inquired Pilgrim growing a little concerned.
“Huh? Yes, just fine. Why do you ask?”
“You look a little distracted. How do you feel in there?”
“Yes, exactly. I feel tired.”
Stinky motioned to Pilgrim to help Breaker get out of the cage. Pilgrim approached the door and extended a long guide tendril. “Breaker, grab ahold of my tendril. Time to come on out.”
“Yes, ok. It feels pretty funny here. I’m having a hard time concentrating. I think there are two of them.”
“Two what?”
“Two Alphas.”
“Yes, come on out. Okay,” signaled Pilgrim.
Breaker grabbed ahold of Pilgrim’s proffered tendril, then hovered the short distance back out of the cage. Breaker’s lethargy lifted quickly. “That was unpleasant.”
“You had a hard time thinking, calculating, ordering your thoughts?” asked Stinky.
“Yes, exactly so. It was like I was in a daze. What do you think is going on?”
Stinky scratched the top of its crown with a quickly formed tendril: a mannerism leftover from his previous existence. “It’s quite ingenious. My guess is that those artifact pieces are dampening the ether inside the cage. The intent is to negate the use of talents while the prisoner is inside.”
“That’s a great theory,” signaled Pilgrim. “But Breaker doesn’t have any talent. No offence intended Breaker.”
Breaker looked sheepish. Stinky turned to Pilgrim perplexed. “Who told you that? Your Commander Breaker is clearly a Vendari thinking matrix. A rare Talent to be sure. You might get one once every hundred generations and it isn’t passed along through breeding and strangely can’t be cloned either.”
Pilgrim gave Breaker a dagger-look of appraisal. “Really, that is news to me and Commander Breaker as well it would seem.”
“It’s not really a talent Pilgrim,” offered Breaker weakly. “I can think fast and retain detailed databases of everything that I have experienced. But I can’t energize my tendrils or anything like that.”
“The many lessons on misdirection and subterfuge now
take on new meanings,” observed Pilgrim with a slight tone of resentment bordering on acridity. “Worse, I never had a chance to beat you in any of those games. You probably let me win the few that I did, to encourage me to keep going.”
Stinky moved on to the next part of the experiment. “Okay. Let’s stay focused here. Now it’s your turn Pilgrim. We need another data point. Go in there; see if you can use any of your talents.”
“You mean try a lash or something? That sounds a bit dangerous.”
“Just see if you can energize a tendril,” suggested Stinky.
Pilgrim shrugged nonchalantly and entered the cage. The effects were immediate. “Oh, there is something funny going on in here. You can’t see it from the outside but you sure can feel it inside. It’s absolutely enervating.”
“Try and energize a tendril.”
“I tried. I can’t. I feel like I should be able to, but nothing happens.”
Stinky motioned for Pilgrim to get out of the cage. Pilgrim was reluctant to admit defeat but conceded the futility of further exertion. They hovered in silence while the little engineer appraised the situation.
Breaker broke the spell of contemplation. “So, what do you think? Should we put these cages onto wagons and take them with us?”
Stinky made the scratching motion again. “I don’t foresee any use for them as containment devices. It’s not like we are going to be taking any Talents prisoner. I doubt we will be taking any prisoners. And tricking an Omega into one of those is a silly thought.”
“Perhaps you are right,” signaled Breaker deflated. “I was hoping that maybe we could find Xodd, then put Valor’s clone inside until we could deprogram it.”
“We should detach the pieces of the artifact from the cage and take them with us,” suggested Stinky. “They may come in handy, and I have some ideas that might be practical if we can experiment with them. If we had more Channelers we could assign a team to have them map out how the pieces influence the ether.”
Breaker seemed to perk up at the mention of Channelers. Stinky noticed. “What is it Commander Breaker?”
“Just an odd memory from my brief internment that has now been jarred loose it would seem. There was a Master Channeler at the battle in this warehouse. I’m not exactly sure but I think it was working with Xodd. I’d seen it before too. It ran the Hegemon’s cadres I am pretty sure.”
“Grivil?” asked Stinky. “Impossible. How did it get all the way from the slip point defense in Ixeter to Privil’s Landing? I was there when Mis—the Hegemon gave the retreat order. So was Grivil. We were nearly overrun.”
“Perhaps I was confused? I’d been in the cage for a while. Things were blurry.”
“Well, no matter. We will take the pieces and do the best we can,” sighed Stinky. “Who knows? They may be the difference between victory and disaster.”
They left the warehouse via the broken front door and assembled in the plaza. Pilgrim couldn’t shake an odd sense of Déjà vu. “I can’t believe we were so close to Valor. I mean Valor’s budding or clone. If I ever see that Xodd again, I will make it pay dearly for what it has done.”
Breaker seemed to smile oddly on its form walls and Pilgrim took notice. “What is it?”
“Oh, just the irony that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for Valor— er, Valor’s budding and indeed Xodd showing up to wreck the place. The Alphas might have just decohered me or fed me to the Omega if they realized that their army was destroyed, and they wouldn’t be taking me back as a prize.”
“Once this is all over Breaker, we will find Xodd and Valor’s clone and set things right,” insisted Pilgrim.
Breaker seemed pensive. “It was an odd bunch that Xodd had gathered around itself. They are playing at being a mercenary company. Hopefully, they won’t go get themselves decohered before we can rescue Valor’s clone. Although to be honest, from what I could gather, we aren’t going to be seen as rescuers: more like kidnappers.”
Chapter 2
The Empty Nodes
“There are too many.” Xodd was growing more and more concerned. The farther they got from Privil’s Landing, the more the refugees had clung to Xodd’s mercenary company. “We can’t give them any more source. They will leave us with nothing for the trip into the Empty Nodes.”
Sergeant Block sighed. “Perhaps we should change our plans then captain?”
“I’m going to ignore your impertinence sergeant and your tone as well. You must dedicate yourself to my ambition or simply leave. Decide now.”
“I’m with you all the way captain. I just thought maybe we could lead this rabble to Rugguroz where they would stand a better chance; we could buy supplies there as well and then start out on our— your grand crusade.”
“No more sharing our rations Block. That’s an order. How far to the slip point?”
Voor’s pilgrims were hovering alongside the nearby wagon that carried a steadily recovering Malador. Xodd had noticed that recently there had only been five of them instead of six and wondered if its wounding had resulted in some loss of power. If so, it gave no indication that such was the case. The Djenirian’s lead pilgrim chimed in. “Oh, not far. We will be there in less than half a cycle. From there we will follow the vertex edge through Timathur’s Node to the neighboring node, then enter the first of the Empty Nodes.”
“There is a small encampment there with an abandoned watch tower captain,” signaled Block. “It’s where Lieutenant Malador and I found Fullfeffer. These followers will no doubt stop there and cease following us when we enter the barren wastes of the top half of Timathur’s node.”
Grivil started to chuckle. The singleton master had surprisingly remained with the group as they fled Privil’s Landing. The first few cycles had been difficult as there had been no easy access to intoxicants and a minor period of discomfort brought on by an abrupt withdrawal had ensued. But now its mood had changed to one of almost buoyant insouciance, tempered occasionally by a tinge of caustic nihilistic cynicism. “If you wanted to be free of this little army of followers, you should never have saved them from being rounded up by the slavers in the first place. Now they cling to you as a savior.”
“I did nothing of the sort,” insisted Xodd. “Would you have me give over our wagons and our own freedom to those pathetic slavers?”
“To be fair sir, most of them are probably following us because they heard about the secret vaults,” signaled Block with a conspiratorial tone on its form walls.
“The what?” replied Xodd.
“You know. The secret vaults that the Endarchs have hidden in the core nodes with all the treasure from their conquests. The ones that only you know how to find.”
Xodd tried not to show any surprise on its form walls at the realization that it had managed to forget its own lies. “Ah, yes. Well, how did that happen?”
Block smiled and grimaced at the same time. “Could be any number of ways: an unguarded moment, talk while gambling during a rest break, a clever way to attract new recruits that got out of hand.”
They reached the slip point to Timathur’s Node and Xodd despaired that they would never be free of the hangers-on. To the contrary, their numbers seemed to have grown slightly; how this was possible Xodd could not fathom. Xodd worried that they might become violent if they began to starve. Already source rations were growing tight despite the rabble having obviously looted the few taverns that they had passed on the way. The only comforting sign was that they were mostly unarmed.
Xodd resolved to lose them with a surprise dash into the wilderness. At the slip point tower Xodd gathered its small command staff together in the base of the tower that was once their former employer’s pleasure retreat; empty vials and cases of intoxicants still littered the floor. The room’s decorations were spartan: a few resting spots, a cheap table of quarried flow, a broken meditational piece of rather low quality. Xodd had to concede that Fullfeffer had been taking its penance seriously save for the intoxicants.
The mood in t
he room was tense. Malador was now recovered enough to return to duty and its form walls were even more disfigured than before if that was even possible thought Xodd. Groz hovered near the door keeping a watch over the rabble that had settled down within the encampment on the other side of the slip point. The Old Alchemist, Grivil and Voor’s pilgrim were crowded together trying to find some place to settle for a rest.
Xodd watched Voor’s pilgrims shuffle about in consternation. “Do you really need all of your ‘parts’ to attend this meeting?”
Voor’s lead pilgrim looked miffed. “I don’t tell you what form you should take, do I? We feel comfortable this way.”
“Your comfort is annoying,” replied Xodd exasperated. “I suppose we shall have to tolerate it. But if your little friend turns out to be anything less than you claim or reluctant to help us, then I will enjoy smashing my club on top of several of your pilgrims.”
“Your threats are charming captain. But you need have no worries there. I have news that will be convincing enough to sway any resistance to our pleas for help.”
“Pleas? We are not begging anybody for help. I’m only doing this because my damn parasite won’t let me think straight otherwise and ripping it out seems unwise.”
“We only need to convince it that the time of redemption is now upon us. It will willingly agree to help us then.”
“This is sounding a little too mystical for my liking,” signaled Xodd with a sigh. “But we are committed at this point.”
“With all due respect captain,” interrupted Block. “We haven’t hovered into Timathur’s Node yet, nor passed into an Empty Node for that matter. We could still change the plan. What about taking this rabble here and using it as an army to go conquer Rugguroz. We could start a slave uprising and set ourselves up as slave kings.”
There was an awkward silence as the proposal hung in the ether. Xodd seemed to be considering the practicality of the suggestion but waved a dismissive tendril. “I like the direction in which you are thinking sergeant, and your idea certainly does not lack ambition. But there is a fundamental problem with your proposal: how long would I rule? The council already occupies Privil’s Landing. The rest of the Free Cities will not be free for much longer. No, we must address the wrongs that have been perpetrated against me first.” Xodd turned to Malador. “Lieutenant, what do you propose we do about this rabble that follows us?”
