Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
“You know, ssomethhing ssthrange happened thoday,” Uful’lan said, chewing on his second chocolate bar. “One of my thrapss didn’th work.”
Twiglet wasn’t really paying attention. “Really? What?”
“Thhe ssthassiss field wass minimal. Jussth enough for a dwarf thh’yag or ssome yanaathhije, if you’re lucky… Buth thhe game cannoth free ithsself.”
“I wonder what happened to my inocybe mushrooms,” Twiglet muttered to herself. “They should be over there.”
“The thrap wass off,” Uful’lan went on. “I ssure don’th underssthand.”
Suddenly, Twiglet got a bad feeling. “What did you say?”
“Uh? I ssaid I don’th underssthand.”
“No, before that!”
Uful’lan stared at her, surprised by Twiglet’s sudden interest in his trapping. “Jussth thalking abouth my thrapss. One of thhem had been swithhched off.”
“Oh, my!” the Mahjit groaned, her tongue unrolling slightly in her distress. “I knew there was something wrong!”
She bolted out of the living room, her stocky legs moving with surprising speed. In a flash, she was dashing up the winding stairs to the upper floor.
“Thwigleth! Whath’ss going on?”
Uful’lan scrambled after her, squeezing his massive bulk through the narrow stairwell. “Whath’ss thhe matther? Whath are you looking for?” he gasped the moment he reached the top.
Twiglet didn’t answer. She was busy rummaging under her bed. When she finally resurfaced, she was dragging a dusty case.
“Whath’ss in thhere?”
“Stop asking questions,” Twiglet snapped. She blew off the dust and pried off the lid. Plunging her hands through a layer of protective foam, she pulled out a dark blue sphere with a flat base.
“Whath a fuss abouth a computher!”
“This is not a computer,” Twiglet grumbled. “This is OCC, my beloved hyperneural probe. And it’s going to tell us exactly what’s going on.”
Dabih Major, coordinates 46.888/+05.453/120.750
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Kyle felt a sinking feeling in his gut. So the bastard wanted to ruin him. He must have planned it all along. Come to think of it, why had the police pulled him over just then? Wasn’t it a little too convenient? Right as they dropped out of hyperspace, a patrol ship had opened fire on the Aranui. It was almost as if they’d been waiting for him.
“Forget it,” Kyle hissed. “You’ll never get your hands on my ship. I’d rather blow it up myself.”
“Come on, Kyle! Don’t get your panties in a wad.” Nagatomo’s eyes sparkled with triumph. “It was just a friendly proposal… no need to lose your head over it. To be honest, with that rinky-dink freighter of yours, it’s a miracle you can even clear atmosphere. One of these days you’re going to end up stranded, and you’ll find yourself out of a job. Unless you decide to become old Rosie’s toy boy, that is.”
He burst into a crude laugh, instantly mirrored by his minions.
Kyle was done. He headed for the exit, where the pockmarked thug handed back his blaster with a mocking sneer. The guy’s teeth looked like a row of rotten stumps, and Kyle fantasized about shattering them with a single punch.
“Cheer up, Kyle!” Nagatomo jeered after him. “You can always throw down a couple of credits on a cyber-match. You might get lucky!”
The idea hit Kyle entirely unprompted. He didn’t even know if it was true, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave without getting at least a little payback. Without a second thought, he took a gamble:
“By the way, Felix… I wonder if dear Rosie knows your cut of the cyber-boxing profits is so much bigger than hers.”
The grin vanished from Nagatomo’s face instantly.
Aha, Kyle thought.
“What do you know about that?” Nagatomo snapped.
“Me? Nothing, really. Not a thing. See you around, Felix. I think I’m gonna go have a little chat with a friend.”
“Kyle, wait!” Nagatomo’s tone was stripped of all its irony now. “We might be able to work out an… ahem… understanding.”
Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Twiglet’s study was a cramped room at the bottom of the stairs. Books of every description were piled everywhere: obsolete leather-bound volumes, prehistoric DVDs, and microchips arranged on diamond-shaped racks.
A shrill, tiny voice piped up:
“THE INTEGRAL CATASTROPHIC PROBABILITY ON A GALACTIC SCALE HAS RISEN TO NINETY-FIVE PERCENT. WE ARE APPROACHING CRITICAL LEVEL.”
This is absurd, Twiglet thought, hunching over her console. At the very least, we should be in the middle of a galactic civil war. And yet… the Galaxy has never been more peaceful.
She tried a different angle. “Filter out the ghost ship reports from the Beta Crateris subsector. It looks like they’re hitting the hallucinogens a little too hard out there.”
“DONE.”
“Factor in the cases of political corruption on Hamal III and the environmental disaster on Ukuku.”
“DONE.”
“Lower the statistical weight of the cold cases on Arkab XI to fourteen percent. I bet it’s just another lone psycho.”
“DONE.”
“Good. Now, recalculate the synchronic tensor and give me the local probability density.”
It took OCC a few seconds to process the request.
“THE LOCAL PROBABILITY DENSITY IS NINETY-ONE PERCENT AND CLIMBING.”
“But that’s impossible!” an exasperated Twiglet burst out, her tongue unrolling slightly as she stressed over the monitors. “Did you account for a ten percent bias? For all events following the Emperor’s death.”
“YES, MA’AM!”
“Show me the map on a galactic scale.”
The probe generated a high-definition holo-map of the galaxy. Areas of uniform density were color-coded, but to Twiglet’s deep disappointment, there were no visible attractors.
“Isolate and identify all density peaks. Cross-reference them with known planets.”
“UNABLE TO COMPLY. NO DENSITY PEAKS EXCEED THREE SIGMA ABOVE BACKGROUND NOISE.”
Twiglet sighed, leaning her elbows heavily on the desk. According to her own calculations, the Galaxy was teetering on the edge of an abyss. Unfortunately, drawing raw data only from the Bageechaa subsector didn’t allow for finer details. It felt as though a catastrophic storm were gathering everywhere and nowhere all at once.
To tell the truth, she had absolutely no idea what was happening.
Dabih Major, coordinates 46.888/+05.453/120.750
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Outside Room 114, Kyle tossed the credit chip into the air and caught it mid-flight.
Five thousand credits!
A total stroke of genius. Now, with a little luck, he might actually be able to clear atmosphere before dawn. Assuming they let him live long enough, of course.
At the Onkalo, murder was just routine. Nobody gave a damn if patrons ended their arguments with a blaster shot. When it was over, Rosie Gallows would just send a pair of servo-droids to haul away the corpses and scrub the floor.
As he turned the corner, Kyle hesitated. Better not to be too predictable.
Suddenly, he remembered the skybridges. On the building’s exterior, a network of tubular structures soared into the sky at varying heights. They had once served as enclosed walkways leading to adjacent buildings. During the war, however, most of the maintenance had gone out the window, and a corrosive fungus had eaten away at the metal.
Stepping onto the fire escape, instead of heading down, he began to climb. The neighboring building was abandoned. From there, slipping out of the district would be child’s play.
He took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor. A couple of times he paused and listened, terrified he was being tailed, but the only sound was the muffled buzz vibrating from the bar below. Gnawed by anxiety, he stepped into a hallway cluttered with piles of garbage. The air was as foul as an oolghar’s armpits. At the far end stood a plastiglass door.
He was going to make it. Maybe.
Assuming the door controls still worked.
A few feet from the exit, Kyle bypassed an open antigrav shaft. In the near-total darkness, it gaped like a hollow skull. Just as he reached for the control panel, a noise rustled behind him. He whipped out his weapon and spun around, but there was nothing to be seen. His heart was hammering against his ribs.
He was just activating the door controls when a horrific laugh echoed through the dark—a sound like a knife scraping against stone.
“Hello, Tokalau. Where do you think you’re going?”
A long clasper flashed out of the shadows and clamped around his throat.
Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Lying on the mossy floor, Uful’lan Siirt was bored to death.
To pass the time, he’d already helped himself to the pantry, but as usual, he couldn’t just sit around and stare at the walls. So he began to nose around, trying his best to keep his wings tightly folded behind his back.
He wondered what Twiglet was up to.
She was still chatting away with that silly machine. He approached a shelf packed with old paper books. He had never seen so many in one place, so he bent down to get a closer look at the covers: Darker Than You Think, Werewolves, A History of Lycanthropy, Cat People… Weird reading material for a Mahjit from Shing-Na. He reached out a hand to grab one of the books and—Zzap! A crackling sound, followed by a sharp sting of pain.
“What are you doing, Uful’lan?”
The K’rell was sucking on his fingers. “You’ve goth an energy field here!”
“What did you expect? I can’t just let my treasures gather dust,” Twiglet said. “There’s a switch under the shelf if you want to browse.”
She turned back to the blinking robotic eye. “That’s it for tonight, OCC.”
“FINE, DOCTOR. DO YOU MIND IF I POWER DOWN?”
“No, go right ahead.”
“THANK YOU, DOCTOR. SEE YOU LATER!”
Twiglet stood up stiffly, rubbing her lower back. “How about some dinner?”
“Eh… well… Thwigleth, thhere’ss ssomethhing I mussth thell you…”
“You already raided the fridge, I know,” the Mahjit sighed. “I just hope there’s something left for me.”
Dabih Major, coordinates 46.888/+05.453/120.750
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Kyle remembered that laugh.
“Just hand over the credit chip, and I’ll kill you quick. Maybe.”
It was Nagatomo’s insectoid minion.
Kyle thrashed, trying to wiggle loose. His only shot was the blaster he was still gripping. If he could just aim… His first shot had to count, because a second one was out of the question.
He tried to buy himself some time. “The… ch-chip…” he gasped, offering the small tag to the insectoid.
Something filthy brushed against his left hand. Now. That was the opening he’d been waiting for. He raised his other hand to level the weapon and—
Too late. Another appendage lashed around Kyle’s wrist, making his bones creak. He dropped the blaster with a strangled scream.
“Forget it, moron. I’m too smart for you. You can’t imagine how pleased I am. I’m gonna get a fat bonus for this.”
It was over. Kyle fought to stay conscious, but even thinking clearly was becoming impossible.
Suddenly, a flash of blue light exploded in the darkness.
The stale air was momentarily displaced by the sharp tang of ozone, mingled with the distinct aroma of grilled meat. The insectoid’s grip around Kyle’s neck and wrist slackened, then vanished entirely as a charred carcass slumped to the floor with a heavy thud.
Kyle spun around and found himself facing the shooter. It was a boy, clutching a smoking blaster with trembling hands.
Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
After a supper of nyctalis—the half-vegetable, half-bug parasitic life-form that thrived on most Bageechan homes—Twiglet and Uful’lan moved into the living room. They sat in silence for a while, each lost in their own thoughts.
Twiglet placed a tray of still-warm inocybe mushrooms on a small table and filled their glasses with a fine Tongaat brandy.
She offered a silent toast to her guest, then simply stared ahead, her face grim. Uful’lan frowned, at a loss for words. He was used to Twiglet’s moodiness, but this felt different.
“Whath’ss thhe matther withh you, Thwigleth?”
Twiglet unrolled her long, forked tongue. “The matter? Humph! I don’t know, and that’s exactly why I’m worried.”
“Ith’ss ssomethhing the probe thold you, issn’th ith? And whath abouth my thrapss?”
Twiglet’s fire-colored eyes flashed with suspicion. “Hmmm… I guess I can trust you,” she answered. “After all, you’re the closest thing to a friend I have left. It’s just… it’s a long, complicated story, and I don’t know where to begin.”
“Well,” Uful’lan said, “when I wass a kid on Kyyaal, my grandma ussed tho ssay: ‘Begin ath thhe beginning and go on thill you thhink you’ve thold ith all; thhen ssthop.'”
Twiglet chuckled. “I highly doubt your grandma ever told you that, Uful’lan. If I’m not mistaken, that’s a quote from Lewis Carroll, a pre-Expansion Earthling.”
“Oh, grandma had a tassthe for Earthlingss! During the war she athe a couple of thhem, who…” Uful’lan trailed off, catching Twiglet’s scathing glare. “Buth I guessss you don’th wanth tho hear abouth thhiss. Sso, were you abouth tho ssay ssomethhing?”
She snorted. “Maybe, if you’d just shut your mouth!”
“Sssorry, Thwigleth!”
“Oh, well… Let’s get straight to the point: do you know what the Holroyd Society is?”
“Holroyd… Uhm! Leth me thhink… Thhey play in thhe ssecond league, don’th they?”
“No, I’m not talking about a soccer team,” Twiglet cut him off. “The Holroyd Society is—or rather, was—a synchronic research institute. Prior to the war, I used to work for them.”
“Aha,” Uful’lan said. “Ssync… ssyinc… ssrrynchr…”
“My colleagues and I,” Twiglet added, “we gathered information. From the Hypernet. Anything and everything we could find.”
Uful’lan looked puzzled, so he helped himself to another serving of inocybe.
“We were looking for highly improbable but nonetheless verified events: strange disappearances, unexplained cataclysms, violent and completely unjustified crimes. I’m talking about obscure facts, things that went almost entirely unnoticed, and that, for some reason, nobody wanted to talk about. The proper terminology is ‘synchronicities,’ or ‘excessive coincidences.'”
Twiglet paused to sip her brandy. “We used that data to establish the free parameters in the Holroyd equations.”
“Hey, hey! Waith…” Uful’lan protested, talking with his mouth full.
“You’re right, sorry. Let me clarify. That information could be used to predict future events with an incredibly small margin of error. The name ‘Holroyd’ comes from the Society’s founder, the human who first developed synchro-complex analysis.”
“Oh! Doess thath mean you could predicth thhings like… thhe day of your deathh, or… which soccer theam wass going tho win thhe inthergalacthic championsship?”
“No, nothing like that,” Twiglet smiled. “The Holroyd equations only apply on a macro scale. They’re used to predict major social upheaval: economic recessions, planetary wars, massive population migrations, things of that nature. Essentially, they help us pinpoint where a crisis is most likely to erupt. In the first few centuries after its founding, the Society frequently collaborated with the Imperial government to help shape social and investment policies.”
“Ssoundss… mmfgh… greath!” Uful’lan mumbled, crunching on a mouthful of nyctalis.
Twiglet wrinkled her nose in disgust, her tongue unrolling involuntarily. “Then, three hundred years ago, the Holroyd Society was forced underground.”
“Underground? Why?”
“To protect itself from a terrible enemy. An adversary so ruthless and merciless that they wouldn’t hesitate to wipe us all out. It’s hard to believe, but we discovered their existence almost by accident.”
The Mahjit poured herself another splash of brandy.
“You see, through synchro-complex analysis, the Society uncovered the machinations of an ancient and malicious cabal. Its followers call themselves the Apostles, and they are responsible for the worst disasters and mass slaughters in recorded history…” Twiglet hesitated, her voice dropping. “Even the K’rell War, in all likelihood, was orchestrated by them.”
Dabih Major, coordinates 46.888/+05.453/120.750
June twenty-third, 666 GE
“Who… who the hell are you?” Kyle asked, astonished.
The newcomer—short and thin—looked even more bewildered than he was. Kyle saw him draw back, casting nervous glances over his shoulders.
Meanwhile, footsteps echoed from the far end of the hallway.
“Damn it, the chip!” Kyle suddenly remembered. The insectoid probably still had it on him. He knelt to search the carcass, but the darkness and filth made it impossible. “Where is it? I can’t… Oh, fuck!” he cursed. “That’s my generator money!”
“Someone’s coming!” the boy said. “We need to get out of here.”
He was right. Better to forget the cash and save their skins.
“Give me the blaster!” Kyle shouted. He fired a shot into the door’s control pad and tried to yank it open. The footsteps were closing in, so he blind-fired a couple of blasts down the hallway. He heard a scuffle, then a sharp voice.
“Give us the money, Tokalau! We won’t hurt you!”
It was Nagatomo’s blonde. And she certainly wasn’t alone.
“Come and get it, honey!” Kyle yelled back as the door finally gave way. He forced his way through the narrow opening, slipping out onto an enclosed skybridge.
The boy was tagging right along at his heels.
A howling storm of wind and rain hit them, lashing with brutal force. Kyle ducked instinctively, pulling the boy down with him. A pair of laser blasts punched a massive hole through the bridge wall, just inches above their heads. They scrambled to their feet and tried to run, but then Kyle saw the abyss looming right ahead.
That was it. End of the line.
The bridge was a trap, and he had sprinted straight into it. A few feet ahead, the flooring vanished completely, leaving nothing but a few bare metal beams hanging in midair. The chasm was at least twenty feet wide. Too far to jump.
Nagatomo’s thugs were currently forcing their way through the jammed door, and they’d be on top of them in seconds. Kyle looked down. The bridge was easily forty feet above the ground. It was pure suicide under normal conditions, but the bottom of the alley was piled high with a thick layer of refuse that might just break their fall.
He grabbed his young companion by the arm. “Jump!” he yelled over the roar of the storm.
Together, they dived into the void.
Kyle landed hard, sinking up to his waist. He immediately tried to claw his way out of the filthy, putrid mass, which the rain had churned into a sort of organic quicksand. Unfortunately, his frantic movements only made him sink deeper. The boy wasn’t faring any better; Kyle spotted him nearby, desperately struggling to keep his head above the sludge.
A series of laser blasts pierced the darkness of the alley.
Random shots, most likely, but they couldn’t rely on the dark and the foul weather to protect them for long. Soon enough, one of their pursuers might decide that Nagatomo’s bounty was worth the risk and jump down to finish the hunt. Kyle thrust himself upward until the tip of his boot struck something solid. He threw his weight in that direction and, after a seemingly endless struggle, managed to heave himself onto a large piece of industrial wreckage. From there, he realized to his immense relief that the main street wasn’t far. It was just—
The boy!
Where was he? Kyle scanned the spot where he’d last seen him.
Nothing.
Then, in the near-total darkness, something thrashed. The boy was right there, desperately clawing to tear a slimy, sticky organism off his face. Kyle yanked off his jacket as fast as he could and tied a sleeve to a protruding beam. Wading back into the muck, he reached the boy and hauled him upward.
They scrambled onto the wreckage just in time to hear a heavy thud—one of Nagatomo’s henchmen had finally screwed up his courage and jumped.
Kyle dialed his blaster down to low intensity and shot the shapeless parasite. The creature writhed and squealed. Fighting back a wave of nausea, Kyle pinched it between two fingers and flung the squirming thing straight at their pursuer. Caught dead in the face by the parasite, the thug went down in the mud with a terrified shriek.
Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
“Are you joking?” Uful’lan asked. He wasn’t hungry anymore.
“Of course not. The K’rell War started after K’rell space cruisers vaporized Tyndall IX, the Empire’s main strategic base.”
“Hey, waith a minuthe… We had tho fighth for ourselvess! Thath crazy Rhodon IV and hiss human governmenth wanthed tho wipe uss outh!”
Trembling with agitation, the K’rell spread his massive wings.
“Come on, Uful’lan, can’t you be more careful?” Twiglet scolded him. “Why do you always take it out on my poor house? Let me get to the point… I was saying that the conflict started after the K’rell attacked Tyndall IX. Your people believed the Empire was about to invade K’rell space. But who passed that flawed intelligence to your high command?”
It was the most incredible story Uful’lan had ever heard. Still, he didn’t feel like contradicting the Mahjit.
“Are you ssaying thhese Aposthless ssparked off thhe war… on purposse?”
Twiglet didn’t answer; she simply nodded.
“Buth… buth… are thhey human beingss? Earthhlingss?”
“In a sense, yes. At a glance, they’re impossible to tell apart from regular humans. You’d need a DNA test. You see, this isn’t your everyday enemy; they are the most treacherous threat we’ve ever faced. Anyone could be one of them. Even the humans we rely on, the ones we consider our friends.”
“I don’th have any human friendss,” Uful’lan pointed out.
Twiglet ignored his remark and pressed on. “Thousands of years ago, at the dawn of recorded human history, creatures of unknown origin invaded Earth. It sounds strange, but the two species were genetically compatible, and over time, they interbred. By now, pure-blooded humans are a minority. Eventually, all evidence of that ancestral invasion was lost to history. Only a few faint clues survived in ancient folklore about ‘werewolves’—humans who could shape-shift into wild beasts.”
Aha, that explains a lot, Uful’lan thought. Twiglet has been reading way too many of those stupid Earthling books.
Suddenly, Uful’lan was feeling hungry again.
“…Hundreds of centuries later,” the Mahjit was saying, “most humans carry a percentage of those lycanthropic genes. And the heritage of that alien race still survives in their worst impulses. Furthermore, recessive throwbacks are always possible. In every generation, a number of human infants are born with at least a quarter of lycanthropic blood. Normally, they remain completely unaware of their true nature, though their psychic capabilities are far above average. Sometimes, they even use them unconsciously. For these people, good and evil are inextricably intertwined.”
“Buth if they arenth aware…”
“I was getting to that. The near-pure-werewolves—meaning those with more than seventy-five percent lycantropic blood—know exactly what they are. Back in ancient Earth times, they were hunted down and slaughtered, but nowadays they lead much easier lives. At this point, they have completely infiltrated our galactic civilization.”
Uful’lan opened his fanged jaw wide. “Buth… thhosse sscienthissth friendss of yourss! Couldn’th thhey do anythhing abouth ith?”
“Like what? Put out a galaxy-wide holovid broadcast? Start a human hunt? Trigger a civil war? I’ve had more than enough of wars. Besides, not every human is a monster. The ones who truly are evil know exactly how to camouflage themselves. In reality, the Holroyd Society tried more than once to brief the imperial government on the Apostles’ secret machinations.”
“And?”
“Well, the only one who actually took the initiative was the late Emperor Rhodon IV—he was a much better statesman than history credits him for. He even managed to pass a classified mandate aimed at capping the lycanthropy rate among public office applicants at five percent. We know for a fact, however, that an untold number still slips through the cracks, aided by bribery and institutional corruption.”
Twiglet finished her brandy and stood up. “You know what, Uful’lan? I’m dead tired.”
“Thhere’ss one thhing you didn’th thell me.”
She looked back at him, wearily. “What’s that?”
“Why are you sscared?”
Twiglet flicked her tongue. “I went to the emporium today. According to Jiali Salgado, a pair of humans have been asking around about me. At first, I didn’t worry—not too much, anyway. But then you showed up with your disabled trap.” She let out a heavy sigh. “You see, there’s still a lot we don’t understand about lycanthropic biology, but we know one thing for certain: their powers tap into Zero-Point Energy.”
“Jussth like my thrapss.”
“Exactly,” Twiglet nodded. “If those two guys are werewolves, they could scramble your traps’ stasis fields just by walking past them.” She shook her head. “It’s pointless to dwell on it tonight. Tomorrow, I’m going to see old Peg. She knows a great deal about these matters—much more than I do.”
Twiglet began to climb the winding staircase.
“Ahem… Thwigleth, would you mind if…”
“Yes, you can sleep in the living room,” she cut him off. “It can’t possibly get any worse.”
Dabih Major, coordinates 46.888/+05.453/120.750
June twenty-third, 666 GE
To Kyle’s immense relief, the alley behind the Onkalo was empty.
Maybe Nagatomo had overlooked covering the back exit, but they still couldn’t afford to let their guard down. He wasn’t in the mood for another nasty surprise.
The kid looked alright, though he was barely able to stand. He gave Kyle a weak nod, and they fled the sector together.
Many blocks away, they finally paused to catch their breath.
“Damn, that was a close one,” Kyle gasped, trying to find shelter from the driving rain. “So much damn trouble for nothing!” He turned to the boy. “How are you holding up? Still breathing?”
“I… think so.”
The voice was peculiar—thin and delicate. Intrigued, Kyle waited for the next flash of lightning to get a better look at him.
“Have we met before?” he asked, eyeing the kid with growing suspicion.
At first, he’d just thought the boy was skinny, but now he realized how remarkably slight his frame actually was. The kid barely reached his shoulder. His eyes were blue, slightly slanted, and his head was shaved, just like…
“A synth! That’s what you are! One of Nagatomo’s!”
Kyle lunged forward, grabbing the kid by the collar and pinning him against the wall. “What were you doing in that hallway? Tracking me?”
“Don’t… hurt… me,” the synth stammered. “I saved… your life… remember?”
Kyle stared into the blue eyes for a long moment, then slowly let go. “You didn’t answer my question,” he pressed.
“You’re right, I belong to Nagatomo. But I wasn’t tracking you.”
“Oh, really? Pardon me if I find that a little hard to swallow.”
The kid wrapped his soaked rags tighter around his chest. “I was running,” he added after a pause.
“Running? From whom?”
“From Nagatomo and his enforcers. If they catch me, they’ll scrap me on the spot. You see, I…” He swallowed hard. “I disobeyed orders. Nagatomo wanted me to throw the fight to the Lycoperdon, but I wouldn’t. I wanted to live, so… I chose to win instead.”
He cut himself off, shooting Kyle an anxious glance. “What? Why are you staring at me like that?”
Well, look at that, Kyle thought. Despite the grueling strain, the exhaustion, and a right wrist that was throbbing like hell, Kyle couldn’t help but laugh.
“You’re a girl, aren’t you?”
“Yes. What of it?”
“I saw tonight’s challenger. The Lycoperdon. No offense, but I wouldn’t have bet half a credit on you.”
“Gender has nothing to do with neural processing capacity!” the synth snapped back. “Nagatomo has made more credits off me than—”
“Okay, okay!” Kyle raised his hands, amused. “Sorry I bruised your ego. I’m sure you’ve got a super-brain. What generation are you anyway?”
“I wish I knew,” she answered, her defensive tone dropping. “Nagatomo bought me on the black market. He had my mind wiped.”
Suddenly, an idea sparked in Kyle’s head.
“Listen, you’re out of options right now, right? And I just lost my entire payday. But I think there might be a way to solve both our problems.”
“I don’t follow,” the synth objected.
“Never mind. Ahem… what did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. But I’m called Shirl.”
“Well, Shirl, I’m Kyle Tokalau,” he introduced himself with a proud grin. “Captain, owner, and entire crew—aside from a one-eyed cat—of the starship Aranui. Come on, let’s find a place to dry off a bit, and I’ll pitch you my million-credit idea.”
Bageechaa, coordinates 99.001/-55.447/1803.240
June twenty-third, 666 GE
Twiglet washed up before going to bed.
In her bedroom, she knelt to chant a prayer in her mother tongue while the house diffused a sweet, drifting melody. Usually, that enchanted music had a soporific effect, but not tonight. She undressed and snuggled down beneath the blankets, listening to the shrieks of nocturnal creatures busy hunting, fighting, mating, or whatever else the night demanded. Most settlers on Bageechaa chose not to wonder what went on in the forest. Especially after dark.
“One must be mad to be walking around out there right now,” she thought.
Or a werewolf. She closed her eyes, trying to force herself to sleep.
She hadn’t told Uful’lan the real reason she had left the Holroyd Society. Fourteen years later, the memory was still a raw, painful ache.
She pressed her palm against the wall, and the house stopped broadcasting the music. Only the soft, rhythmic whispering of living vegetable matter remained.
A few months before the war, she had modified the Holroyd equations by introducing a new constant. She had suspected an increased, non-random clustering in the distribution of malice across the galaxy. There was growing evidence that a string of recent tragedies could no longer be blamed on destiny, fate, or an unfortunate series of coincidences. In far too many cases, one could detect the fingerprints of a wicked, coordinating mind, and the constant term was designed to factor this in.
The results of that synchro-complex analysis had been deeply disturbing: on September eleventh, 652 GE, the integrated catastrophic probability was projected to hit ninety-nine point eight percent, with peaks reaching ninety-nine point nine percent near Khyyaal—the K’rell homeworld—and a staggering one hundred percent near Tyndall IX.
Twiglet had foreseen the conflict. Months before it actually broke out.
Naturally, she had immediately presented her findings at an emergency meeting of the Society Council, urging them to warn the Emperor.
Unfortunately, no one had taken her seriously. Instead, she had been accused of academic misconduct, deceit, and incompetence. They had sacked her on the spot, giving her a single week to pack up her belongings and clear out of Headquarters.
Once again, Twiglet wondered why the Holroyd Council had been so desperate to get rid of her.
The Apostles.
Had they already infiltrated the secret guardians of galactic civilization?
In spite of the warm blanket, Twiglet shivered.
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