054: A Demanded End – Two
An ornate desk in an elaborately decorated office space. The far wall is nothing but arched windows showing the silvery blue of a moon close enough to imply that the office is within a ship orbiting it. Seated at the desk in a high backed chair is Queen Kaizoku, flipping through displays on the screen of her desk, bringing up holographic models of esoteric equipment to stare at before swiping them away, clearly not finding what she was looking for. The hum of the ship's systems were the only sound accompanying her quiet swipes, the scene undercut by a moody, atmospheric melody.
The door to her office opened then, the Queen's Red Left Hand striding in. Her expression, usually so tightly controlled, had shifted into a noticeable frown as she advanced to stand before the Queen's desk.
Queen Kaizoku didn't look up from what she was doing until the Hand came to a stop before her, and when her eyes darted up to shoot her a look, she frowned herself, as if sensing that there was something amiss.
"What news have you brought to me?" She asked after a tense beat of silence.
The barest flicker of hesitation stilled the Hand for a moment, but she pushed past it, instead placing the data pad she'd been carrying on the desk before her Queen.
Shooting her one last quizzical look, Kaizoku lifted the data pad, skimming its contents, her expression of bored disinterest shifting into something hard and unreadable.
"I only just received the alert through my sources," the Hand told her once Kaizoku carefully placed the data pad back on the table, "From what I can tell, they're going to try and keep this out of the media."
Kaizoku scoffed at that. "Of course they would. A noble house, dissolved? And not only that, but its survivors absorbed into a lesser house?! The indignity of that alone would be sure to drive some to take their own lives."
The Queen stared off into the distance after that, her metal fingers tapping against her desk in clear agitation. The Hand allowed her a few moments of quiet contemplation before asking, "How will this affect our mission?"
A single, dark laugh cracked out of Kaizoku at that, and she turned her full attention to her Hand, voice thick with venom as she said, "This will simplify matters, will it not? The goal I have striven for my entire life, to lay claim to my family's seat of power, has been wrested from my grasp by the machinations of those so below my station that to engage with them would legitimize their newfound position. The one thing I have desired above all others has been wiped from existence, and thus, I am left with nothing but the hunt for ancient machines that refuse to give up their secrets!"
Halfway through her impassioned speech, Kaizoku had stood from her chair, hands flat against her desk as she glared at the woman who had delivered her such ill tidings, but the Hand remained unwavering in the face of her Queen's anger.
Instead, she tilted her head slightly back, staring at Kaizoku with something edging close to contempt when she asked, "You will let something so petty as the political maneuverings of your inferiors against those who had to resort to deceit to bring about your undoing send you into such a state? You and I know you were meant for greater things than a throne on your homeworld."
Kaizoku straightened abruptly, her artificial eye momentarily glowing as the targeting systems within it activated, but this burst of emotion was quickly wrangled, and it was with a cool stare that she asked of her Hand, "You think me wrong for for this wrath? This fury as the targets of my vengeance being eradicated by someone other than myself?"
Mirroring the Queen's earlier position, the Hand braced both of hers against Kaizoku's desk as she leaned forward. "Your anger at what was taken from you? No, I would be a hypocrite to judge you for such. But the ones who stole your throne, and now these who have destroyed it, and by the ancestors, the throne you sought itself? All of that, none of it is as important as what we are building here and now!"
Stone faced but wild eyed, Kaizoku slowly leaned down to brace her hands against her desk across from her Red Left Hand, levelling a deadly glare at her as she whispered, "You question my goals?"
"I question your choice of them," the Hand replied, not flinching away in the face of her Queen's very obvious displeasure, "You sought the throne. Why? For power? As you are, untethered by the whims and follies of those you would be forced to rule, you hold more power than any of your ancestors could have dreamed of! Followers? You and I both know you have no time for those who cannot think for themselves. To have that many voices clamouring for you to fix their every little problem, you would have been driven mad! Here, among the stars, you are free to forge your destiny in a crucible actually worthy of your efforts. A knife in the back was the only thing that would have been guaranteed to you, had you actually put your effort into seeking your own revenge."
The two held each other's stare for a long, tense moment after that, the Queen looking to intimidate, while the Hand remained impassive.
Eventually, the barest hint of doubt cracking through her unaffected facade, the Queen demanded, "If not the throne, then what? My life's work rendered impossible to complete, what remains? What am I without that?"
The Hand stood then, fully at attention as she looked down on her Queen as she said, "You know exactly what. You feel it, as strongly as I do, that drive, strange and alien though it may be. Even before I knew about these strange machines, I felt the connection that binds us. All of us. I swore my loyalty to you for reasons you are well aware of, but I came to you first because I knew, instinctively, that you were who I needed to find. We have been chosen for a destiny greater than any political squabbles, and you would do well to remember that."
Again, the Queen rose to mirror the Hand's stance, only now her fury had ebbed away, her stare contemplative.
Another tense beat of silence filled the room, only this time, Kaizoku blinked, and she nodded in acquiescence to everything her Hand had said.
"I value your loyalty," she said quietly after a moment, "But more than that, I value your candor. Had I pursued my goals, I could be guaranteed to never experience either from anyone ever again. But you are correct, there are greater things in store for us. It would behoove me to remember that."
The Queen's Red Left Hand nodded in return.
In a dimly lit room, General Grim and Chancellor Bathory sat across from one another, the holographic display of a planet between them. Against the pale blue of the world, a series of golden triangles were skating across its atmosphere in a formation that, even to the untrained eye, was nothing short of sloppy.
As the golden formation advanced, a squadron of red ascended from the planet's surface. Swift, precise, so tightly arranged that they may as well have been a single unit rather than dozens. As unerringly as an arrow loosed from a bow, the red squadron made straight for the golden one, which caused the gold squadron to scatter apart into every direction.
The red squadron shifted, this time into a phalanx that the gold squadron could not outrun, as blip by blip they blinked into nothingness. In only a matter of moments, no gold remained, and the red fell back onto travel formation and returned to the world from whence they came.
The hologram blinked out at that, and the lights brightened in the room somewhat, enough to give detail to the ornate furniture that filled the small study. Plush leather chairs, old fashioned wooden side tables, and a writing desk that looked completely out of place on a modern space ship. The Chancellor's tastes clearly ran antique.
Plucking up a tumbler of some amber liquid and a perfectly clear and square cube of ice, Bathory took a measured sip before saying, "It seems your successor was not up to the task."
Grim barked out a humourless laugh at that, her mandibles twitching in agitation. "As I told my superiors before they allowed the words of a charlatan to sway them. They were more interested in the lies that fool sang so sweetly in their ears than the truth they knew of me from first hand experience."
That got a dark laugh out of Bathory. "An experience I am all too familiar with. As it stands, you have my condolences. Though the one who had you cast out has fallen by efforts other than your own, the vengeance you sought has technically come to pass. With this interloper removed, will you return to your old position?"
Grim's mandibles fell still at that. "My vengeance was never targeted at them. An adept manipulator of facts was all that they were, and I knew that their fate would end up being something exactly like this. No, my true vengeance is against those who exiled me, who listened to and acted upon the fantasies concocted by a person who could in no way, shape, or form actually deliver on anything they claimed. Years of service, of proven results, all witnessed first hand by my superiors, and they threw all of that away for someone whose only skill lay in extolling their own false virtues. No, I will never return to their service, no matter how they may beg for me."
Taking another sip, Bathory grinned at her. "Then I hope they bloody their knees begging for you."
Lifting her own glass from the side table next to her, Grim lifted it in cheers before taking a sip herself.
"Besides," she added, "I have found a calling far more befitting of my skills, and far more worthwhile of my time. I would not give up on all of this as of yet, when my own Storlayacas has yet to be found."
"Yes, that machine was more than I could have imagined," Bathory said, her eyes going distant as she lost herself in memory, "That bit of machinery I showed you before, the one that led me to Kaizoku, it was indeed from Yarula. An empty spot in its cockpit is empty no more, as the piece fused back into where it belonged the moment I placed it there."
"The marvels of Hyttan technology," Grim said as she took another sip, "Would that they could have left anything resembling an instruction manual behind for us to understand the intricacies of these things."
Bathory's laugh was warm and rich as she said, "Come now, Grim! What is life without a little bit of mystery? The Hyttan will be solved in due time, but until then, we will reap what they have sown."
A small server room, consoles blinking and chirping in the semi-darkness. A red glow was cast throughout the room by the symbol displayed on the main console, an axe that was, for once, not fragmenting into glitches.
The darkness was momentarily pierced when the door across from the main console slid open, and a hooded figure stepped inside. Once the door shut behind them, plunging the room into gloom once more, the light coming from Augury's eyes lit up the interior of her hood.
The image of the axe began to glitch then, once Augury drew close enough, and a distorted laugh burbled out from the speakers throughout the room.
"So the seer has finally come to grace me with her presence." the Program drawled, its voice still partially garbled, but smoother than it had sounded around the others.
"I had to be certain that you actually were what your creator claimed you to be," Augury said, the distant affectation of her voice less pronounced, "That you actually had a connection to the Storlayacas."
"And what has your assessment of me proven?" The Program asked, equal parts condescending and curious.
An odd clicking sound came from deep within Augury's helmet, like the sound of rocks being dragged against one another far below the surface of the ocean, and the strange alien tilted her head back slightly, her eyes brightening as a vision overtook her.
…pieces of machinery not assembled, but stitched together like the sides of a wound healing close…
…a field of stars, a horrific black shape folding out to blot out the light…
…graves, graves and graves and graves, stretching out far past the horizon, and farther than that still…
…a Hyttan ruin completely static while days, seasons, years, eons reshape the world around them…
…a glowing eye opening in the dark, then another, and another, and another, and another…
…the head of a match burning, but it's actually a world…
…more stars blinking out as the shape grows impossibly large…
…two mechanical eyes flaring to life, the eyes of Storlayacas…
…a mechanical hand reaching out, only to curl around the haft of something…
…the same image, glitching as the haft flares violent red, along with the double bladed axe its attached to…
Augury staggered forward slightly as the onslaught came to an end, the chaos of noise from the visions replaced by the quiet whir of circuitry around her.
Lifting her head to the main console before her, the avatar of the axe momentarily overtaken by the vision of one, Augury said, "It has proven that you hold the key to what I seek- what we seek. Through you, the Storlayacas will be reunited."
The Program chuckled again. "Of course they will. Your doubt was baseless. I will perform exactly as I was programmed."
"But you weren't programmed, were you?" Augury said, not an accusation, but a statement of fact, "You were unintended, your creator playing around with forces they couldn't hope to understand. They sought to control you for their own ends, but you were always destined for a higher purpose."
"Naturally, which is why I had to remove them from the picture." The Program confirmed, the lights across all the consoles all flickering at once.
"A dangerous thing to do for an AI, killing those who gave you life. There are forces in the galaxy who would delete you for less." Augury mused.
"You and I are both aware that there are greater things at stake than a single life, aren't we?" The Program returned, "Things older and deadlier lurk in the darkness between stars, do they not? Things that were common knowledge for our common ancestors, after a fashion."
Madame Augury's eyes flared at that. "You would do well to keep that kind of speculation unvoiced."
"Of course," was the Program's amused reply, "I would never dream of presenting a theory without first gathering more information on it."
Augury stepped up to the main console then, placing her hands upon it so she could lean down and speak directly to the avatar on screen as she hissed, "That is a quest I encourage you to drop. With just the General's Storlayacas left to find, your usefulness is rapidly coming to an end. But even before that, if you state any of your implications, I will have no compunctions about dismantling your circuits one by one. You of all beings should understand the need for some things to remain hidden."
Under Augury's glare, the avatar of the axe fragmented in a panicked manner, the machinery in the room momentarily whirring louder.
Eventually, completely free of any distortion, the Program responded, "I understand."
Augury kept it pinned with her glare for a few more unnerving seconds before she leaned back from the console, and the frenetic fragmenting of the avatar before her eased somewhat.
"Continue your search," Augury said before she turned to leave the room, "There is still one unit left to find."
"Confirmed." The Program responded, light momentarily filling the room before it was plunged back into darkness as Augury took her leave.
Giggling in delight, her floral avatar spinning lazily, Viatrix said, "People seem to be really excited about what our latest video implied about Madame Augury!"
Seated at the table in the mess hall, Elytra looked up from her dinner, saying, "Oh?"
"The leading theory is that she's actually hyttan, though people are divided on whether she was frozen in stasis since they vanished, or cloned well after the fact."
"Well, speculation drives traffic, eh?" Rhea said, nudging Elytra with her elbow, "Give something to keep them busy until we go on our next mission."
Clacking her chopsticks between her fingers, Pryseia suggested, "I've been looking through Avvisi, and there are several Leviathan bounties within the area. We could always broadcast another hunt to further keep interest in our antics if we run out of scripted segments before the next Storlayacas is found."
"I could be down for that," Malakh said before hastily swallowing her mouthful of food, "Honestly, getting some more practice with mech combat would probably be a good thing."
Nevara hummed thoughtfully as she set down her drink. "Along those lines, I was thinking, now that we have ample funding, on looking into a suite of full immersion training sims for such a purpose. Mech training was something that all Thalatte soldiers had to go through during the course of their service," she told Elytra, "As the officers wanted their troops to be able to fill in for whatever role was emptied due to mishaps in the line of duty."
"We can certainly look into it," Pryseia agreed, "They'd be a bit too large to fit within the Pelekys itself, but there is as yet ample room with our cargo hold."
"I can take a look across the Kith digital marketplace to see if-" Viatrix abruptly cut off, and this had everybody out of their seats in an instant.
"Are you alright?" Malakh called out.
"Ye- yeah! Yes!" Was Viatrix's excited reply, "Sorry, just tabulating! I've got a signal! I'm picking up a Storlayacas!"