The Thousand Emperors

the sky long before you reached the surface. And please remember, Mr Gabion, this is hardly an act of sacrifice. In fact, I – or rather, Horst Sachs – fully intend to speak to you again, regardless of what happens to either this body or yours.’

The station shook again. ‘Then I should go,’ said Luc, his throat tight.

‘You should be aware,’ the Ambassador added, ‘that we took the opportunity to make some necessary adjustments to your lattice when we made physical contact.’

Luc’s eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of adjustments?’

‘Your lattice required optimization. The crude surgery performed on you was insufficient to allow the full use of its potential.’

‘What potential?’

‘The ability to control mechants in the way you saw us do, to subvert attack-systems, or even boost physical response times. We have also given you the means to track down the stolen artefact, which we strongly urge you to do.’

Luc nodded wordlessly as the hatch hissed into place before him. He pulled himself into his seat restraints, then watched as the doors at the far end of the dock swung open to reveal a vista of stars.

With any luck, his departure wouldn’t be anywhere near as bad as his arrival.

TWENTY-ONE

Almost as soon as the flier lifted up from its cradle, something slammed into the station with tremendous force. Clearly the Ambassador wasn’t wasting time following through on his promise. The stars wheeled past the open bay doors, and the flier was sent crashing into a bulkhead.

Luc’s head snapped sideways, his teeth clicking together. Blood began to fill his mouth and he swallowed hard, grimacing at the taste. Emergency alerts flowered in the air all around him.

Tubes dropped down from immediately overhead, reaching towards him and forming a seal over his nose and mouth at the same time that a thick, glutinous liquid began pouring out from hidden nozzles, filling the interior of the flier in seconds.

Luc breathed in the high-oxygen mix coming through the tubes and felt suddenly calmer, so much so that he found himself wondering if there might be some form of narcotic in the air mix. The flier meanwhile pumped visual data to him directly, via his lattice, and he saw a Sandoz mechant had entered through the open bay doors, its carapace bristling with weaponry.

The mechant launched itself immediately towards the flier. Luc flinched, hearing it land on the hull, a soft thud that reverberated through the impact gel surrounding and cushioning him. He watched with horror as the mechant extended manipulators, using them to secure itself to the flier’s hull. It then applied a tightly focused blue flame to a spot on the hull, which brightened to a dull orange almost immediately.

Go away, thought Luc.

The mechant jerked suddenly, and the flame switched off. It let go of the flier, its manipulators undulating around it, as if in confusion. Drifting across the bay, it rebounded from a bulkhead, now apparently lifeless.

Luc stared at it in stupefaction as the stars wheeled by beyond the bay doors.

The flier carefully manoeuvred its way out through the bay doors before quickly boosting far away enough from the Sequoia that Luc could see the station’s long hub had been shattered in several places. Pieces of the Sequioa were drifting apart from each other, some spinning as they went.

What came next happened so fast that Luc only had time to think about it clearly a few minutes after the fact.

First, his flier flashed a warning that it was being targeted by multiple energy and kinetic weapon systems. Then it accelerated hard enough to break every bone in his body, if not for the impact gel surrounding and supporting him.

He blacked out. The next time he became aware of his surroundings, the Sequoia was twenty kilometres distant and receding fast. The flier’s onboard AI outlined each and every one of the thousands of pieces of spinning and flying wreckage with bright green circles and associated impact probability estimates.

Luc called up a view of the Sandoz platform, and saw a heavily shielded framework supporting multiple weapons systems. Red circles marked dart-sized missiles hurtling across the intervening space towards him. Clearly Ambassador Sachs’ pre-emptive tactic of destroying the Sequoia, however drastic, hadn’t worked as well as he’d hoped.

Luc imagined the missiles detonating, and then watched as incandescent points of light suddenly bloomed amongst the stars.

I did that, Luc realized with a thrill of shock that ran up his spine like electricity.

He glanced towards the Sandoz platform. Light bloomed at half a dozen points across its framework, as its remaining stocks of missiles also spontaneously detonated.

The resulting explosions tore the platform apart like soft candy under a blowtorch.

Luc found himself wondering just how much chaos and death one man could bring about with that much power. He felt numb, as if he were no more substantial than a ghost drifting high above Vanaheim’s upper atmosphere.