Ultimately, it was Tritogenes's focus on the sciences, despite his background in the arts, that won Enyalios over. Under all his early bluster about “reconnecting with the spirit of adventure” that had put their ancestors on the ship that had, for ten long millennia, taken them through the stars and finally to the binary that became their home, Enyalios finally discovered a mind truly interested in furthering humanity's understanding of science and technology.
That, Enyalios thought at the time, was something he could support.
Now, however, Tritogenes's ability to read the room worked in Enyalios's favor more often than not. He knew the younger Hexarch still considered him to be a bit “stodgy” and “conservative,” but after patching up their differences with the start of Project Titan, Enyalios found a fast friend and resourceful ally in Tritogenes.
And yet, despite their now-strong friendship, Tritogenes never failed to strike a nerve when he read Enyalios so easily. Aegesander had the same habit, but he did the same thing to everyone, somehow making it more palatable from the older Hexarch.
Rather than growl, Enyalios laughed. “Because there is a 'but' coming. She's been making requests of my senior staff for two days now.”
Tritogenes's eyebrows rose. “Requests? As in...?”
Enyalios nodded, frowning. “Yes. Just this morning, she messaged the steward of the guest house where she's staying and said, and I quote, 'if it's not too much trouble, can you bring breakfast to my room?'”
“You know she's only doing it to annoy you. Hell,” Tritogenes laughed. “Is that why she wasn't at dinner?”
“I can't say,” Enyalios replied. “I sent a messenger to tell her to come, ordered her in the most polite way I could manage as well, but she never showed.”
“She's probably here on Aegesander's orders.”
“Why, though?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why would Aegesander, or why would she of her own volition, come all this way just to needle my staff with pointless rudeness?”
Tritogenes waited a moment before answering. When he did, his voice was quieter and he spoke a little more carefully. “Maybe they're testing you after what happened to Nikos.”
Enyalios gestured angrily. “Then they could simply do so! Slights against my staff are intolerable.”
“You could throw her out, or even have them tell her no.”
Now, Enyalios laughed, loud and uproarious. “I admire that about you, Tritogenes, but I am not quite willing to start a fight on the Council floor for something as petty as this. Let them have their little victory.” He shrugged. “It won't bother me long term.”
“Then...”
Again, Enyalios laughed, but the sound was almost conspiratorial this time. “My friend, if I set out to return her rudeness with some of my own, it's not fun.”
Tritogenes quirked an eyebrow. “Fun?”
“Of course! She's been here for days now. It's almost become a game, at least that's how I've been treating it.”
Tritogenes's face lit up as he processed the idea, and a grin spread across his features. “I remember a certain Hexarch 'offering' to guide me on a tour of the city's waterfalls shortly after my elevation.”
Enyalios kept his voice, and his face, carefully neutral. “Oh, yes. They're quite dangerous, you know. 'Eurybia,' I said after the first time she made a request of my staff, 'if you have the energy today, I have prepared a tour.'”
Tritogenes laughed. “The same line you used on me.”
Enyalios grinned, breaking his stoic demeanor for a moment. “Yes, except it worked on her. Unlike you, you crashed hardhead.
“At any rate,” he continued, “you'll get to deal with her soon enough. For now, let us talk about the Project. I fear it's the last time we'll get to talk privately.”
Tritogenes nodded. “As you say. Tell me, Enyalios, what happened to Nikos? Your official report is, let's say, vague.”
Enyalios felt his face darken, not from embarrassment, but out of anger. That passed in a moment, however, as he reminded himself that Tritogenes was perhaps the only Hexarch who could understand how it felt to lose a Titan-Candidate. Rivka understood, but, while Enyalios respected her, he considered the young Hexarch to be much too soft.
With his mental mask carefully back in place, Enyalios replied, “he got cocky and tried to take on a pair of gigas by himself.”
Tritogenes did not reply for a moment, and Enyalios wondered if he had somehow offended the other Hexarch. He pushed that worry aside—Tritogenes would have told him immediately if that had been the case. For all his annoyances, the Council's youngest member did not play the same sort of games the others did if he could avoid it.
Rather than directly address Nikos's loss or what it was that killed him, Tritogenes said with utmost politeness, “show me.”
“Give me a moment.”
Tritogenes nodded and left the room, heading to the kitchenette attached to Enyalios's office.
Set in front of one wall like an archaic movie screen was a much larger holoprojector than either of them could carry on their person. Using the controls at his wrist, he navigated through the menus while Tritogenes busied himself in the kitchenette, likely making drinks for them.
After days of dealing with Eurybia, Tritogenes's politeness was refreshing. The other Hexarch did not ask, and in so doing imply that Enyalios might not be up to the challenge. He simply did.
With the recording ready, Enyalios waited for Tritogenes's return. Fortunately, he did not have to wait long. Tritogenes knew what both of them preferred and, after five years of unofficial meetings like that, knew exactly where Enyalios kept everything.
Silently, he handed a steaming mug to Enyalios. The black coffee within had been sweetened a little more than he preferred, but the alcoholic kick was certainly up to his standards. In his own hand. Tritogenes held an unfamiliar pink liquid.
At Enyalios's inquisitive glance, he shrugged and said, “I wanted to try making something new.”
“So you are celebrating something.”
Tritogenes laughed. “And I thought it was only I who could read people like that.”
“Years of working side-by-side will do that to anyone, even me.”
Limani's Hexarch gave a short bark of laughter. “You make a fair point.”
“As much as we fought, you'd think I would have picked that talent up sooner.”
Now, Tritogenes's laughter came louder and more boisterous. He caught his breath, sipped his undoubtedly sugary drink, and shrugged. “I never expected you to.”
“Your confidence in me is outstanding.”
“In my defense, I thought you were a stodgy pain in in the ass.”
Enyalios laughed. “In your defense, I am a stodgy pain in the ass.”
Before working together on Project Titan, Enyalios and Tritogenes were actually banned for a time from addressing one another directly for more than twenty minutes during Council meetings. That had eased tensions somewhat, but they continued to butt heads for years.
And then the mastigas swept across Kipos like wildfire and Diomedes poisoned himself in shame.
He remembered that Council session vividly. He and Tritogenes stood up at the same moment, glared at one another, daring an interruption, and then in near unison declared that something had to be done about the mastigas.
It was like a switch had been thrown. Overnight, he and Tritogenes became friends.
And now they stood side by side again at the culmination of the Project that ended their fifteen year feud.
Wordlessly, Enyalios gestured to the holo with one hand, dimming the lights with the other.
He reached for the control to start the video, then paused. “Success has not come easy.”
Tritogenes's face darkened, obvious even without the overhead lights. “No, it has not.”
“I must admit, I'm a little jealous.”
The shock on Tritogenes's face was nearly palpable. “Jealous, how? Everything I
built went to hell.”
“Mine has been no different. Watch.”
The video began, showing Enyalios, resplendent in a new purple robe, talking to a man wearing a full suit of combat armor. He left the sound muted, and when Tritogenes asked about that fact, Enyalios insisted that sound was not necessary to convey the message.
“I have heard those words enough,” he added, without making eye contact.
The man on the screen exchanged a few words with Enyalios. He did indeed remember those words. They talked about the suit, the first of its kind, and its capabilities. Enyalios had encouraging words for him.
“This will be easy,” he remembered saying. The words, the lie, ate a hole in his stomach every time.
On the video, Enyalios's mouth moved without words. The man in armor nodded and gestured. His face was obscured by his helmet and mask, but the intent behind the gesturing seemed clear enough.
The camera switched to a feed inside a small room. It was bare except for a single mastigas gigas, armed with a long club, much heavier and more appropriate to its size than the baton One Hundred stole from the ones she vanquished.
It paced the small room, clearly agitated by its captivity. A large door at the far end was shut and, Tritogenes presumed, locked. He guessed it was the door through which the gigas had been led—or pushed—into the room.
The armored man stepped into the center of the video, giving a clear look at his equipment. In hindsight, Enyalios could see every flaw that early suit possessed. Its parts were too soft or too brittle, designed for combat with human enemies. Enyalios cursed his foolishness. His forces helped push the mastigas back from Kipos; if anyone other than Rivka should have had a clear idea of what the mastigas were capable of, it was him.
And he still made the suits too weak.
The gigas turned and sighted the armored man. It bellowed. Its posture, the sudden tension in the shoulders and the head thrust far forward, could indicate nothing else. Even in the silence of the muted video, Tritogenes knew that sound and it was enough to freeze his blood. The gigas wasted no time with anything either of the Hexarchs could have called skillful fighting. Instead, as soon as the beast saw Enyalios's man, it lunged forward, club raised high to strike.
The man dodged the strike and laid a left hook into the side of the gigas's head. With the suit amplifying his strength, the punch was powerful enough to knock the massive creature off balance, letting the armored man follow up with another quick strike. On a human target, the next two blows would have easily broken bones.
The gigas, however, continued to rage on. It moved slower after the first hit, and the third one seemed to hobble one of its arms, but finally it connected with its club. The thing looked to be a solid steel beam two meters in length and at least as thick at the end as a human's thigh was wide. It connected with the man's armored torso in a brutal impact made all the more gruesome by its lack of sound. He folded like a doll as the momentum from the club slung him against the nearby wall, at the edge of the camera's pickup.
The gigas roared again and charged, slamming into the armored figure as he struggled to his feet. The giant picked him up by his neck and slammed him into the wall, repeating the motion twice before Enyalios paused and cut the video.
“That was three years ago.”
With what even Enyalios could see was a carefully constructed, and very thin, veneer of professionalism, Tritogenes asked, “I assume you have had more success since then?”
Rather than reply, Enyalios brought up the menu again. He selected a clip from the lower right corner. “Nine days ago.”
The menu faded again, to be replaced with a room very similar to the previous one. This new arena was larger and several more doors led in differing directions, but otherwise it was identical in its stark emptiness.
In the center of the room stood a behemoth of steel. Taller than even the gigas now, this version of Enyalios's power armor looked more like a walking tank than a human inside a suit of armor. Here and there lights dotted the armor, though their purpose was unclear from the recording.
“Nikos?” Tritogenes asked.
Enyalios felt his lips tighten into a thin line. “Yes.”
A door at the far end of the room opened, admitting two gigas. On the silent video, it was obvious they did not yet see Nikos or his armor.
Enyalios felt very cold inside as he watched the opening moments of the fight. Watching as Nikos gained an early upper hand against the mastigas only made the eventual result of the trial worse. Several moments passed and Enyalios became aware he had clenched his fists so tightly that his nails dug into his palms.
At his side, if Tritogenes noticed, he said nothing about it. Instead, he seemed to be thinking aloud. “They act very different when a sophont is around.”
Enyalios paused the recording while he could still fool himself into believing Nikos might defeat the two gigas. “I am aware, Tritogenes. Perhaps you ought to ask Rivka how they act when led by a sophont. Or,” Enyalios allowed a little more anger into his voice, “perhaps you should ask your own people?”
Tritogenes's eyebrows narrowed into a frown a just a moment, but it passed as quickly as it appeared. “I needed the most realistic trials I could craft.”
“So you said, and I recall warning you that to capture a sophont would be too dangerous. When I heard of your Incident, it seemed as though my caution was warranted.”
Tritogenes opened his mouth for a moment, then stopped.
Rather that watch Nikos's death again, Enyalios cut the video and raised the room lights. “I have not had your success.”
“What about Daniel?”
“He is training day and night. I fear he will push himself too far.”
Tritogenes waited a moment before asking, “what then?”
Enyalios raised his hands, palms upward and fingers curled like claws. “I've mastigas blood on my hands, Tritogenes. If Daniel... If he fails, I will go myself.”
For just a moment, shorter than even a single beat of Enyalios's heart, a look of utter shame passed across Tritogenes's face. “I wish we all were like you.”
Enyalios scoffed, choosing for his friend's sake not to mention the slip of his emotional mask. That scoff turned into an angry growl, aimed not at Tritogenes, but at himself. “To hell with that. Wish we were all like Rivka instead.”
Tritogenes's eyebrows rose, though Enyalios could not tell if it was his tone or the mention of Rivka that did it. “I thought you didn't like her.”
“I appreciate her, Tritogenes. Rivka is soft, gentle, but underneath all that is an iron spirit that nothing can break. No, I meant what I said, though you will not repeat it outside this room.”
Tritogenes nodded. “Second Lord Pallasophia, Aphelion's facility director, is the same way. She, too, told me that if none of Aphelion's test subjects succeeded, she would go herself.”
“But, as I understand from your message, that will no longer be a problem?”
Tritogenes nodded. “Number One Hundred succeeded.”
“I wish you would not refer to them like that, Tritogenes. And what metric did you use to define success?”
He raised his arm, summoning his holo controls. “May I?”
Enyalios nodded, entered a command on his own control panel, and waved acquiescence.
The lights dimmed again, and this time the holo against the wall showed events twice the size of Enyalios's own recording. Torn between amusement and annoyance, he nonetheless laughed—Tritogenes and his flair for the dramatic, he thought.
The holo showed a sandy pit, empty. A few moments passed and a massive door at one end slowly swung open. Through it strode a barefoot human figure wearing mastigas clothing and carrying a backpack. Unlike Enyalios's recording, Tritogenes's holo included sound, though all that Enyalios could hear was the rumble of something massive moving out of sight.
The woman dropped the backpack and drew her weapons, a steel baton in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Eny
alios shot Tritogenes a questioning look.
“Taken from dead mastigas,” he explained. “A gigas and a fonias, specifically.”
A few moment passed as the woman in black advanced across the sand, then a towering, four-armed monstrosity literally leaped into view.
“By the Ten Thousand,” Enyalios heard himself swear as the elite took a swing with one of its massive swords.
She moved with fluid grace, dodging and striking whenever opportune. Slowly, over the course of several minutes of constant combat, she wore down her opponent. She was not without her share of injuries, but carried on despite them. Enyalios knew exactly how terrifying one of those elites was in person, and to see it confronted with such a mixture of grace and ferocity was inspiring.
At nearly five minutes, it was one of the longest nonstop exchanges of blows he had ever seen. Even gladiators and pugilists broke contact every few exchanges to catch their breath and reassess their opponent. Nothing of the sort passed between these two figures.
Finally, the elite, a monster ripped from Enyalios's nightmares of the fighting on Kipos, sagged to its knees on the sand. The woman in black did not stop fighting there, either. She savaged it, ensuring with bloody efficiency that the enormous mastigas would never draw another breath.
“What was she about to do?” Enyalios was only dimly aware that his voice had risen in pitch. He normally spoke in a tone slightly higher than Tritogenes, pitched that way by his Katarraktean upbringing and the need to project his voice over the planet's omnipresent waterfalls. This was different, much closer to the high, clear quality needed to be heard over the din of combat.
“Scavenge,” Tritogenes said, and Enyalios raised an eyebrow. Tritogenes continued, “where do you think she acquired her clothing, armor, and weapons?”
“You did not provide them?”
Tritogenes shook his head. “No,” he replied. “everything except her body itself came from the mastigas she killed.”
“Ah, right. Your little...” He paused. “Incident.”
Tritogenes nodded grudging agreement. Enyalios knew his fellow Hexarch counted that failure among his worst. Finally, Tritogenes said, “yes. It made sending materiel to the subjects difficult.”
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