"You think I'm worried about a little danger?" she barked. She was entirely expecting danger. Only it would be the Starbleeders and the Engineers who would suffer the losses.
"You haven't changed a bit. I want you to understand that this is my operation. Dismiss whatever desires you have of claiming credit for yourself."
"Since when do I have to think the way you want me to?"
"Think however you like. But our combat scripts and protocols are well aware that you may try something and have prepared accordingly. You could find yourself on the receiving end of a molecular splitter. That said, help us achieve our mission and there's a place in the Starbleeders network for you."
"Understood." She doubted there was any reward in this for her. Because she assumed the Engineers would destroy them. Even if the Starbleeders won out, she couldn't see Voke-lanaris helping a former enemy.
Likely the only reason he hadn't terminated her yet was because she would be their key to harnessing the black goo if it became necessary. He'd at least had the good grace not to make her link to a breaker. Not that she would have.
"Good. Then I'd like to inform you that we've lost control of an asset. The offspring of Raksamat."
Kai threw back her head and laughed. "The Engineers must've helped it escape. Do you have any idea where it is now?"
Voke-lanaris shook his helmeted head. "I've only just been told, and the data is limited."
They attended to several other details for the next few minutes.
"That covers everything then," Jace.blek said. "Thank you again for agreeing to sponsor this operation."
Given his past, she figured Jace.blek might have more grievances to blame on the Starbleeders. But he'd managed his emotions quite well. Maybe he'd rationalized the Starbleeders' abusive training methods by twisting Phoenix into the scapegoat. Or perhaps he planned to betray them much further into the future.
Approximately six minutes later, they boarded an omega-class ship and synced with the other Starbleeder troops via a psi.link. One hundred twenty-eight Starbleeder Engineer-soldiers served as their gift for Phoenix and his Engineers.
Kai got a good look at them in the ship's ready room.
A heavy, yet sleek, angular dark gray and black armor ornamented their mostly humanoid forms, their helmets variations of lifeless, intimidating designs.
Aboard the vessel, they all activated their godwebs. Then that ship joined the others that had gathered in the hollowed cavity deep under Burkos. Together, the eight bulky cigar-shaped vessels cruised through the silver maelstrom that contained the Engineers' institute. Once inside, the ship jettisoned Kai, Jace.blek, Voke-lanaris and the other Starbleeders out over the jungle of Phoenix's institute.
Their formation of death rallied through the night air to the monolith's butte.
The ones that didn't fit atop it hovered around.
Further overhead, a violent, orange-brown nebula churned among the stars. On her HUD, the ships' sensors classified the nebula as a cosmic storm but offered little other data.
The eight omega-class ships surrounded it, their godwebs protecting Voke-lanaris, every one of the Starbleeder Engineer-soldiers, Jace.blek, and even Kai in their aura.
Jace.blek thought.
The disruptors were configured so they wouldn't affect their psi.links, but would limit Phoenix's powers. Theoretically.
Patches of the monolith behind him began graying as if by a fungus spreading at light-speed. Then the protrusions on it and pieces of its surface began flaking off. Through the psi.link, Kai became aware that this was the work of a tiny Kugelblitz bomb as well as Jace.blek's smart dust.
The Kugelblitz bomb chewed away the black goo coating the false karma pylon shard on a microscopic level. For fleeting seconds the crystal itself glowed white before vanishing into nothingness.
"Tactically speaking it was incredibly foolish to preserve their life force in a single point," Voke-lanaris said. "But I guess that was the tradeoff for resurrecting your lost Engineers."
"It was a clever idea, Phoenix," Jace.blek said. "You, the student, became the master. And the masters the students. I'm guessing you weren't able to resurrect them with all of their old talents intact. Still, what better way to guarantee a successful new generation of Engineers than retraining the legends of the past..."
After the message from Raksamat, Jace.blek had deduced that his students here weren't novice Engineers, they were the dead grand masters of the Engineers' long history. Now they were gone once more to history.
"Everything you worked for is being destroyed and you won't even try to prevent it?" Voke-lanaris taunted.
"I'm sorry. I was seeing off Raksamat. He's been reunited with his family, and I couldn't help but get a little teary-eyed," came Phoenix's voice.
Kai thought, earning a collective laugh from the psi.link unit.
"The Starbleeders network isn't kind to traitors. We'll find him after we finish with you," Voke-lanaris said calmly. "I hope you don't think you're being slick, altering yourself out of the visual spectrum. That's child's play. Right, Jace.blek?"
Like that, the Buejentoe vanished for a second then reappeared. "You see, Phoenix, I am still very much capable as an Engineer despite your best efforts. I deserved to be on the front lines. I could handle it."
Materializing where the monolith had stood, Phoenix assumed a severe-looking pose in his polished black and dark gray greatcoat, heavy-looking boots, leg armor.
A look of intense focus had replaced Phoenix's normally dull complacent expression. His eyes glimmered curiously. "You're incredibly smart, Jace. But even a Buejentoe can fail to be objective. You have your ambitions. It was my job as your teacher to protect you from those. To be objective when you couldn't."
Whatever resentment Jace.blek must've felt, he contained it well, his words calm and collected, according to Kai's translator. "If I could laugh, I would. Maybe I wasn't being objective about the risk. But it was my decision. You couldn't accept it. Because you weren't objective either."
Swirling clouds of silver sand formed into constricting dark sheets around the Engineer. But as the sheets closed around him, they disintegrated.
Phoenix nodded as the second cycle of their swarm vanished. "I'm sorry for restricting you. The truth is that you were justified in your rebellion. But that doesn't make you justified in this."
"It's a little late for apologizing," Jace.blek said. "It also feels self-serving given that we've got you at our mercy."
Stats at the edge of Kai's HUD detailed the drop in temperature, the reduction in oxygen, the rise in ultraviolet radiation and atmospheric pressure around Phoenix. It was all thanks to smart dust affecting the space around him. Yet he didn't look any worse for the wear.
"Mercy? Who said anything about that?" His reality-warping allowed his voice to carry like normal.
"Without the monolith, you can't warp reality as effectively as before," Jace.blek said.