“Of course not. My Titan will join me at Prosgeiosi in time to meet the rest of the Hexarchs, I assure you.”
“Your Titan does not have a name?” Eurybia inquired.
“She does. She would also prefer it if I kept it a secret until the meeting.”
Enyalios was his friend, but the odds of him not having listening devices scattered around the area were somewhere well below zero. Tritogenes would have, and had, done the same thing in his place. It was all part of the game the Hexarchs played with one another and they all knew it. Until he figured out how to integrate his Champion into Technocrat society, he wanted to make sure people knew as little about her as possible.
Privately, he was afraid of what they would do if the learned the lengths to which he had gone to achieve success in his branch of the Project. Too many died over the past five years, and their eyes haunted his dreams even still. Despite that, he would do it all again if it meant producing his Champion and preventing another planetary slaughter like Kipos.
Eurybia eyed him distrustfully for a moment, then replied with a slight smile and a shrug. “As you will.” A moment passed, during which she finished one of her crepes, and she turned to Enyalios again. “First Lord, it occurs to me that it might be more economical to travel together to Prosgeiosi.”
That, Tritogenes realized, was the rest of her game that morning. Another insult to Enyalios, another implication that his ships were substandard and unsuited to the task of ferrying him to the capital and back. He had to admit he admired her creativity. For Enyalios to refuse her offer would have been an even bigger insult to her than she gave to him by making the offer in the first place. Now, Tritogenes suspected he had been caught in the same Byzantine plan.
Enyalios's eyebrows rose. “Together?”
She nodded, but before she could speak, Tritogenes opened his mouth to speak. As her offer had been directed at Enyalios and not him, he could reject it without turning the whole complicated matter into another insult. “I would not want to leave my own ship here, First Lord.”
“Perhaps,” she said with a smile. “But Prosgeiosi's landing queue has developed a reputation lately for unconscionable backups. Being so busy, First Lord Tritogenes, you may have missed the upswing in traffic at the capital over the last year or so. One ship would fit into the queue more easily than three.”
“And you propose to use your personal liner?” Enyalios asked. Tritogenes noticed that he had, very carefully, set his espresso cup back on its little saucer.
“I ferried a group of inspectors out to the mining complex on Cetus-A-Seven before coming here,” she said. Her voice was carefully neutral. “So I find myself with several staterooms available aboard the Akoni. I would appreciate if you joined me.”
Tritogenes found himself nodding almost involuntarily. With that phrasing, she removed the insult and turned the whole thing into a favor they could do for her. Refusing this would be an even bigger slight against Eurybia now.
Enyalios seemed to have put things together about the same time Tritogenes did. The muscle of his jaw tightened and loosened several times before he answered. “Your offer is a generous one, First Lord Eurybia. When do you want to leave?”
“Soon,” she replied. “With your leave, First Lord Enyalios, I will go make the arrangements aboard the Akoni.”
He nodded. “I will comm you when we have packed. At your leisure, First Lord.”
She stood, adjusted her robes, and made a show of finishing the last of her still-warm espresso. “First Lords,” she said with a nod before turning to leave. She stopped, turned back and added, “oh, First Lord Tritogenes. There is one other matter. I fear First Lord Hyperion may be sick. He declined my offer of an audience on my way to the belt. You correspond often with him, yes?” Before he could agree, she continued, “inquire after his health, please. I would consider it a personal favor.”
Tritogenes nodded once, slowly. Hyperion had always been a supporter and patron of his before Ophion took him under his proverbial wing. Even after, he maintained an affable relationship with the centenarian. For the last twenty-five years Hyperion had also, quite publicly, refused to meet with either Eurybia or Aegesander in private.
“I will speak to him,” was all the promise Tritogenes would make.
Eurybia nodded, apparently pleased with that answer, and turned again to depart.
Tritogenes and Enyalios watched her walk away. Once she was safely out of earshot, a fairly short distance given the roar of the hundred-meter waterfall less than half a kilometer away, Enyalios spoke up. “You're aware of the insult she threw at us with that offer, right, Tritogenes?”
He nodded. “Very much so. I'm afraid she played us quite well this morning, my friend.”
Enyalios shrugged. “Such things happen. Besides, it's only fair after what she gave me last night.”
“Oh?”
“That party was quite public and, despite her remarks this morning, she said a great many flattering things about Katarraktes and its arts. I imagine those remarks will make planetary news just after we depart.”
Tritogenes grinned. “Well played.”
Enyalios hummed. “She comes through this area of the system often, yet this is one of a very few times she came to my planet directly. Aegesander comes and goes...”
“As he does from all our worlds,” Tritogenes interrupted.
“...but never Eurybia. One wonders what her actual reason for coming here was.”
“Perhaps Aegesander sent her,” Tritogenes offered.
Enyalios laughed. “He's a crafty old man, Aegesander, but I don't think he would stoop to something that petty.”
“You're probably right,” Tritogenes said, then rose. “At any rate, I'm going to return to my suite and pack.”
Enyalios did as well, waving a payment into the cafe's system. “A wise decision. Eurybia will be quite cross if we're late. Before we depart, however, while we still have privacy, I would like to discuss at length the plans to entertain your, ah, 'guest.'”
Chapter 16
Victoria pointed at the door ahead of them with the end of her rifle. The door was exactly like it had been when she left this area the first time, but now with the aid of the lights Eleni restored, Victoria could more clearly see what it had originally looked like before the mastigas destroyed it.
On one side of the door a sign had been painted on the wall. Once vivid red with black block lettering, the colors were faded and large chunks of the stone had been smashed away. Now, thanks to the mastigas, the message read “A/T/O/IZ/D /E/SO//E/ ON/Y.” The left side of the door was bare except for a series of small holes, much too small for the mastigas to have put them there.
“They're in there.”
Pallasophia nodded. She said nothing, but motioned the rest of the team forward.
“She's right,” Photeos supplied. “The dirt is heavier here, and the mastigas are easier to track. Nearly every set of fresh footprints leads through that door.”
“How many?”
Photeos shook his head. “I'm sorry, Lochagos. When they get to the door, it's hard to tell them apart. My best guess is, 'many.'”
“This is the only door on this floor into or out of that room,” Pallasophia said. “There is, or was, a clean room on the other side, but I suspect it's destroyed now.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, the burning feeling in her nerves, Victoria laughed. “If it wasn't before, the fonias that jumped me made sure to smash whatever was left.”
“Anything we should be aware of?” Stavros asked, gesturing to the door.
“The catwalks,” Victoria replied. “They're going to attack from there.”
“Impossible,” Pallasophia argued. “The catwalks are inaccessible. The doors leading to them were welded shut during the Incident.”
Victoria shook her head. “Impossible or not, several of them attacked from there.”
“They could have climbed, Lochagos,” Stavros offered.
“It's possible, but those catwalks are six meters up.”
Victoria growled. “Again, impossible or not, that's what happened.”
Pallasophia took a deep breath, then continued in a softer tone. “I apologize. I shouldn't doubt your experience.”
“Thank you.”
Pallasophia gestured to her soldiers, saying, “sweep the area. Make absolutely sure there's no chance of anything coming up behind us.”
They nodded, saluted, and Photeos and Stavros moved off. Eleni stayed for a moment. “Lochagos,” she said, “if you give me a few minutes, I can rig a motion sensor for this room. That way we'll at least have warning.”
Pallasophia nodded. “Do so.”
With a few moments of privacy, Pallasophia's posture changed momentarily. She stepped closer to Victoria, lowering her voice to a whisper just loud enough to be heard through the helmets.
“Are you alright?”
Victoria eyed her through her helmet. “Are you asking because of my injuries or because we're about to return to my birthplace?”
Rather than answer directly, Pallasophia said, “I won't presume to understand what you went through here.”
Something in her tone, bitter regrets rising to the surface, made Victoria trust her just a little more. “I wouldn't ask you to, but I'm alright.”
Pallasophia's hesitation before replying was obvious even through her mask. “Are you?”
“I was, quite literally, born to kill mastigas.” She kept her voice at the same whisper, but let a hard edge creep in. “I'm not afraid of what we'll find on the other side of that door.”
“But?”
She growled. This woman was damnably perceptive. Even Victoria had not known there was anything else to that thought until she asked. Her reply was slow and methodical as she carefully thought over every word. “If anything, what I'm afraid of is what we'll find when we're done.”
Before either of them could say anything else, Eleni announced that her motion sensor was ready. Victoria's mind snapped back into combat focus, forgetting anything else she might have been planning to say. Instead, she started issuing orders to her team.
“Pallasophia and I are going in first. Stavros, Photeos, you follow right behind us and move out to the sides. Eleni, that sensor will alert you first. You watch our rear.”
As she spoke, the sudden, and fundamental, shift in how she viewed these four Technocrats registered on her conscious mind. Victoria had no idea when that change happened, or even when she made the jump from distrust to trust, but it was there nonetheless. At least until the mastigas in the room beyond were dead, these people were as much hers as they had been Pallasophia's, or Photeos's before her.
For a moment no one moved, and Photeos started to argue, but Victoria was already in motion to the door. Pallasophia barked a simple, “you heard her!” and everyone sprang into motion.
Victoria reached out a hand and placed it on the door. With her other hand, she raised her rifle to her shoulder and flicked on the light. She left it, for the moment, angled down slightly so that it was out of her way, but immediately at hand. She rested her hand on the door handle for a half a second, then reached back to touch the baton hanging from her waist, the one she had taken from the mastigas gigas.
Behind her, a male voice muttered a quick prayer, but she was too focused on what lay ahead of them to identify it.
She pushed open the door and stepped through, again thankful for the work Eleni did. A single overhead light offered enough illumination that, with the team's combined weapon lights, Victoria could easily make out things around her.
With a smile no one saw, she told herself that things were already going better than they had the first time she went through this room. Now, if they got attacked, at least the piles of dirt and broken furniture would not be a hazard.
In the light, Victoria looked around, remembering the room as it felt in the dark. She overlayed that with how it now looked, and then visualized how it would have appeared before the mastigas trashed it. This was likely some type of waiting room, the voice of her memories told her, or perhaps a preliminary place where her predecessors should have been inspected by doctors.
At the far side of the room, the door stood open, spilling light into the darkness beyond. She remembered closing that door, but if the mastigas had indeed been gathering in the pod room, it made sense that they might leave it open to better watch for the humans' approach. Inside her helmet, Victoria grimaced as she realized their lights and noise already spoiled any chance they might have had to sneak up on the mastigas.
“They've got to know we're here,” she said. “Watch overhead.”
“You heard her,” Photeos added quietly.
Victoria took a deep breath and motioned to Pallasophia. She counted down from three on her fingers before lunging into the room. She crouched low, sweeping the area with her rifle's light. Her other hand automatically went to her baton, bringing it up beside the lightweight rifle.
Thanks to the mastigas, the room that should have held the sleeping bodies of Victoria and the ninety-nine lives she dreamed about being was empty. It was not, however, quiet. Feet moved around and things popped and creaked, but none of them could get a clear line of sight on anything.
Someone behind her fired several rounds into the ceiling at an assailant that even Victoria had not seen, but stopped when Photeos snapped an order.
The passed by row after row of shells. The door was at what she considered the far end of the room, nearest the shell numbered “VI:I:T.” From the other end, near her own shell, a voice came singing on the cool, damp air. Stavros started to comment, but a sharp, wordless growl of rebuke from Victoria stopped him.
“Victoria,” it sang. “Vic. Tor. Ia. Vict. Ori. Ah.”
Slowly, she led the team past the line of shells, growling an order to stay quiet every time one of them commented on them. Their lights never found anything, but the sounds of movements never ceased, and the voice at the other end continued repeating her name.
She almost stopped as they passed her shell with the inscription on the side from which she had taken her name. Without that little string of characters, her name would have still been “Number One Hundred,” the thought of which sent an empty chill down her spine. That was not a name, it was a curse.
A few meters away, something shifted and creaked. Victoria spun and raised her rifle. Half a second later, the others did so as well. Four cones of light shot off in different directions as they searched for the source of the sound.
After a moment, her attention fell on the heavy table with the thick, black top she used for shelter against those first gigas. One of the earliest memories that she could reliably say belonged to her was of those terror-filled moments. Naked and and confused, she stood up to the gigas and killed the monsters before they could kill her. Every second, every step of that fight had been etched into her brain.
Which explained why Victoria immediately knew that particular table was not in the same spot. It sat in a corner, wedged there with the thick top facing out. She leveled her rifle at it with programmed precision.
“No attack,” hissed a voice from the far side of the heavy table. “No kill, you. Stand now, I. Speak, we?”
“Don't shoot,” Victoria whispered as the others turned and aimed at that spot. The rifles they all carried could have penetrated that table with deadly precision, yet Victoria was curious.
“Are you insane?” Photeos retorted. His tone was hot, but he kept his voice nearly as quiet as Victoria had.
“I might be,” Victoria admitted, “but I want to find out what's going on first.”
“Don't shoot until Victoria orders you to,” Pallasophia whispered.
“As you say, Lochagos.” Photeos was not happy, but his tone indicated that he would obey her order.
“Stand up,” Victoria ordered. “We won't shoot.”
A fishbelly white face slowly appeared over the edge of the upturned table. Three brilliant gr
een eyes regarded the five soldiers with wary interest. The neck supporting the bulbous head was thick and muscular, but the body to which it was connected seemed like it would have been better suited to a malnourished child. Two long arms ending in bony hands came up, raised in the air in mimicry of surrender, while a much smaller pair of arms stayed clutched close to its pale chest.
The sophont stared at each of them in turn, regarding them with a mixture of curiosity, fear, and revulsion. A hole opened in Victoria's gut as the temperature in the room seemed to plummet to something approaching that of deep space. Beside her, she could almost feel Pallasophia radiating hot tension.
“Who are you?” Victoria demanded.
Water washed across rocks as it spoke, wet and gritty. “Have no name, I. Victoria are, you.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Big ones, gigas. Speak, they.”
Victoria's mind reeled. Never in her time in these lower levels of the facility, the place she regarded as the labyrinth, had anything other than the sophont truly conversed with her. Even then, all it really did was try to dishearten her in a last-ditch effort to get her lost in the maze of corridors. It failed, and she killed it. She knew it was dead because she had removed the damnable thing's head from its body.
“Pallasophia,” she hissed.
“I see it,” she whispered back. “Looks like our theory was right, after all. Gods between, but I wish it wasn't.”
To the sophont, Victoria said, “the gigas told you who I am?”
“Yes. Spoke, they, I. Killed many, you. Killed elite, you,” the sophont hissed in its strange rhythm.
“So why shouldn't I kill you?” Victoria demanded.
“Answers want, I. Truth seek, you.”
“Not good enough,” Victoria said, tensing her hand on the rifle's grip.
The sophont held up its larger hands, hurrying through its words. “Speak now, I. Of you, only stories know, I. Not yet made, I, when killed elite, you.”
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