“Hey Voy, how you holdin’ up?” Samuine greeted Voy over helm comms. Be it fear, or be it excitement, Voy’s heart covered both bases and began to beat rapidly. If they were able to talk using helm comm, the Merriment had to be close. Voy considered how best to proceed. Helm comm generally couldn’t be intercepted, falsified, or manipulated. If Samuine could be trusted then Voy could speak freely with him.
“Been better, but I’m upright at least,” Voy drew in a deep breath, “How about you? Got your very own bladeship huh?” A sigh of relief came from Samuine’s end.
“Sort of, just for this assignment then I give it back,” Samuine paused while he spun up his next string of words, “I’m glad you’re alright, I… I’m sorry. If I’d known…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Voy decided not to mention his still-missing arm, “You had bad orders. It’s not your fault.” Heavy silence fell over the two. Several times Samuine opened his mouth to speak only to have the words die in his throat.
“Yea. You’re right,” Samuine finally replied. “We thought you were dead. All of us. What happened?” Voy clenched his fist and paced in the strangely spacious vent shaft. This was a question he was ill-suited to answer. Unlike his friends, he’d only recently been made aware of his ‘death’. Something between shame and anger floated around in his chest as he recalled his encounter with Fenrothyne.
‘They all think you’re dead, why disappoint them?’ he replayed the bitter words in his mind. Why would my survival disappoint anyone? Voy shook the feeling off.
“I’m as in the dark as you are, probably more. It wasn’t until a few days ago that Fenrothyne did me the honor of telling me I was supposed to be dead,” contempt seeped from his words at Fenrothyne’s mention. The more he thought about the incident, the more it made him realize how little he cared for the Bolund brute.
“The official story we were told was that you died in a bladeship accident a few weeks after ascension day,” Samuine seemed unbothered by Voy’s hostility toward Fenrothyne, “Avaron gathered everyone who hadn’t left Anitora yet and gave us the news. He claimed this was the risk of allowing those who were unworthy to persist, that they,” Samuine cleared his throat and put on a mockery of Avaron’s bassy public speaking voice, “carry misfortune and ruin around them by building upon a foundation of deceit. Let not pity stay your hand from our glorious burden.” Voy choked and fell back against the vent wall.
This couldn’t be true, it just couldn’t. Avaron had put him on that ship, told him his duty and gave him the hope needed to persevere through every agonizing day. Voy’s stomach sank as a sickening revelation began to unfold.
“Samuine,” his voice quivered as he fought to control his emotions, “I received an order scroll from Avaron. I gave that scroll to you.” Samuine shifted around on the other end. “Tell me it’s real. Tell me he changed his mind, that this is some elaborate ploy to prove myself.” Silence answered him and hung for an eternity before Samuine at last spoke again.
“The scroll is real, and it was written by Avaron…” the faintest glimmer of hope threatened to pull Voy from the grip of despair, “but the document wasn’t meant for you. It was written over nine hundred years ago for an entirely different 'scion of the High Marshall' back when the Torchbearers were legitimate.” Voy’s head fell back and cracked against the wall. He stared in silence up at the ceiling while his mind ran through every possible sequence of events that could allow Samuine’s words to be true and Avaron to still be out there working to help him.
“So what happens now? You chase us down, finish what you started?” He willed himself to hold it together. If the Merriment was close he could not afford to wallow in self pity.
“No. You’ll get to Filigree well before we catch up. That gives us, meaning you and me, time to figure out how to sort everything out,” the optimistic tone Samuine was speaking with drained some of the tension. Voy didn’t respond straightaway. The rapid shift from wasting away on Treffel to being on a high priority mission from Avaron had been culture shock enough. What mental capacity remained would need miserly accounting to properly re-orient the new context he was just given.
His neck began to buzz with the sensation of a conflicting comm request, though this one was by way of low-net. Voy ignored it for the moment, there was no one using low net that took priority for now. He clenched his fist and pounded it once into the floor, bulging the metal. A shocked gasp came from somewhere below him. Voy stood and began to walk slowly away from where he’d been seated, leaving behind the minor damage he inflicted.
“What is your exact mission? Just to vaguely ‘stop the torchbearers’, or is there a more specific angle?” It was Samuine’s turn to dally before giving an answer.
“Technically,” he squeaked, “we were supposed to stop you from landing on Filigree at all.” Voy stopped walking.
“I didn’t ask what your goal was,” Voy snapped, “Neither of us are changing the past. What are you trying to achieve now, and what can I do to help?”
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“Leave us,” Hembrandt dismissed the men flanking Elara as they entered his study. They shut the hinged, wooden door behind them and left the siblings alone in the time capsule of a space. Hardwood furnishings, from the desk he sat behind to the plethora of bookshelves that made up the walls, dominated the space. Maroon carpet covered the floor and sheaves of paper covered his desk. At present he stood behind the desk with a tumbler filled with a pleasantly caustic beverage.
“What do you -” Elara began to speak but stopped after Hembrandt shot her a sharp look. He was calm, he could scarcely be anything else, but fury burned in his eyes even as he greeted her with a forced smile.
“Don’t. Don’t speak yet,” He sipped from his glass, “I haven’t decided if I’m mad at you, mad at him, or both.” Her shoulders sagged and Elara wanted to fold in on herself until she was no longer in the room. Her helm extended over her head reflexively, hiding her face from the ire of her older brother. The admiral turned his glass in his hand making a small whirlpool of the liquid it contained.
“Why did you take it upon yourself to take our freshly recovered hero and lead him anywhere but to me after I explicitly said I needed to see him as soon as he was awake?” Elara shifted her gaze to the floor.
“I wanted to see him first, we both had questions to ask him it just seemed like a race,” she looked up sheepishly, hoping he might soften toward the innocence of her intent.
“Do you think this is a game, Elara?” he grew more stern, the veneer of his good nature ablating away with each second. He tilted his head back and finished his glass in one gulp before throwing it across the room where it shattered against the wall-shelf. “Do you have any idea what his stunt in the vault has cost us!? Has cost mankind!?” he leaned forward and put both his hands flatly on his desk, his eyes bulged, his nostrils flared.
“Didn’t he save us? Would you rather he died?” Elara was taken aback by his outburst, but time had inoculated her to the fear she once felt as a child to such displays.
“I’m not talking about that! That was great, and in a vacuum it makes him a bloody hero!” he reached for a screenslab on his desk and tossed it at her, gentle enough for her to catch. She did so effortlessly, spinning it in her hand to see the image he’d set it to display. It was a photo of the vault, one of the walls. Scattered on the floor before it were bits of broken electrical machinery and something like shattered glass, no… crystal shards.
“Is this…” she managed.
“Yes, yes it is. The command protocols for the Darkmount, for the Choir, the whole damn reason we’re even here and the one thing that could turn the Apoctillon into story with a happy ending!” he scoffed and grabbed a bottle of liquor from the glass cabinet he stored it in, pouring himself a new glass.
“Did the transfer with the archoseers not work?” Elara asked, looking up from the screen. Hembrandt’s hand trembled before he downed his freshly poured glass.
“It would have if he bothered to to do it,” he set the glass down gently on his desk and fell backward into his leather desk chair. “Our little hero decided to take it upon himself to take in the living data. With no training, no foreknowledge, no implants. Just a split second executive decision to put all humanity at risk so he didn’t have to harm two archoseers he’d never met.” Elara set the screenslab down on the desk, not breaking her gaze from the image of the shattered Iyaethrum until her hand was off the device.
“Is the data still usable if it’s in him?” she asked, looking again at Hembrandt. The admiral sighed.
“Maybe. Maybe not. It probably is, but without any of the requisite implants or training we can’t move it without a whole lot more techno-wizard nonsense than we have onboard. Our one time use scapegoat to get Thurgia off our backs has now become integral to our success.” Hembrandt went to pour himself another glass, but Elara stepped over and caught his arm before he poured.
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“What matters is that we still have it. Voy is alive, he is with us, and with him we can still complete our mission once we get to Filigree,” Elara eased her grip as he changed his mind and returned the bottle to its cabinet.
“Regardless, I need to speak with him. Taking in a piece of the Choir no matter its size could wreak havoc on his mind. I need to make sure he has it under control.”
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Voy stopped by his room after his call with Samuine. He retracted his armor, showered, put on a fresh slip-suit with a disappointingly empty left arm sleeve and grabbed is sword. He left his armor retracted and fixed the sword to himself with an over the shoulder strap. Satisfied with his refreshing, he stepped out into the corridor of the ship’s night time and moved purposefully toward the engineering section.
He did not meander through back ways and service tunnels, but held his head high as he walked openly through the normal through-ways. What crew was up and about often recognized him and offered him hasty but genuine displays of respect, salutes and greetings followed with verbal thanks or commendation for his efforts during the breach. He did his best to be friendly in turn, but his mind was singular.
First, he needed his arm.
Second, he needed a chat with Hembrandt.
Making his way to engineering took longer this way, but he made it all the same. The great doors opened at his approach, no dex-fil snaked out to greet him beforehand. He waited until they were most of the way open before walking inside, unwilling to wriggle through at the earliest convenience.
“My word you came back on time and waited for the doors to open all the way? How do you get along with the other one?” Undahiil was already up and mobile. Somehow the titanic animated mound of scrap looked… leaner? Yes, between the hours earlier and now he’d shed perhaps half of his mass and replaced a number of sections with streamlined and orderly replacements. Several dexfils worked tirelessly back on himself, adding and removing pieces from his ferric body. He was nearly trimmed down to a bipedal form, and though still tall, he managed to fit his remaining bulk beneath a brown cloak.
The Jeremayne had his back turned to Voy as he entered, still enraptured with his work at the bench from earlier. Floating metal spheres zipped around the workshop, each with their own green eye lens and trailing dexfils and grabbing tools or parts before ferrying them around or affixing them to larger works. Some traveled to and from Undahiil himself, delivering parts to him either for the device hidden in front of him or for the dexfils on his own body to use in the ongoing reconfiguration of his being.
Sparks no longer flew carelessly around the foundry, and the mechanical whir had been reduced to a hum as each automated arm moved under the smooth glide of fresh lubrication. What once laid in piles now stacked in ordered columns. Dust had been seemingly obliterated from the space. Voy whistled his astonishment.
“The place looks great, any reason for the spring cleaning?” Voy asked with a renewed levity, reminding himself that only Hembrandt had earned his ire. Undahiil turned to face Voy, his mass of metal tentacles adjusting and wriggling around him to continue his work behind him as he turned his attention elsewhere. His hooded head still appeared inhuman, but his restructuring had gone to great lengths in closing the gap. What had once been a mass of assorted eye lenses was replaced with six slit-like eyes, three on each side, arranged in roughly triangular fashion. Alarmingly his mouth and nose were now visible, ghostly pale from a lack of sunlight but otherwise remarkably unblemished.
“Not a flight of fancy if that’s what you’re asking,” he spoke without moving his mouth, casting doubt on the authenticity of his flesh, “we’re only a few hours out from landing, should be dropping off-stream right about…” the Auric rocked and the whine of spinning down star shackle reactors hummed through the ship. Undahiil hummed a note of satisfaction. “I intend to disembark for our meeting with the raikon, can’t be leaving this place a mess in my absence.” That name again. Hembrandt said it was a title for their ruler. Undahiil seemed to think the same. Voy could only picture the kartorim from his projection, the one that taunted him with destined death for his friends, and their mission was to help this figure. Voy stuffed away his anger again, he couldn’t know how many others had been duped.
“Ah, but you’re not here to admire the immaculate nature of my workshop, you’re here to admire the immaculate nature of my work!” Undahiil laughed a hearty, mechanical laugh as his dexfils gently lifted the arm he’d been working on from the table behind him and held it aloft between him and Voy. “What do you think?”
Voy’s eyes went wide as he took in the artistry before him. The Jeremayne’s smug self satisfaction was entirely justified. The arm was a fabricated metallic construct to be sure, yet so finely were the bands of metal and composite woven and extruded that it perfectly mimicked the appearance of flesh in all but color. Each muscle was captured in form and function, cast in something with the shine of silver and the durability of impact treated vacsteel.
Between each sliding muscle was a semi-fluid film of gold that softened to allow movement and hardened to keep the space between the fabricated tissue from becoming clogged or jammed with particulates. On the palm of the hand a grey, rubber like composite lined the hand to allow for normal grip and the use of touchscreen devices. There were no screws, bolts, or weld lines anywhere on the device. If Undahiil said he grey the arm rather than assemble it Voy would have believed him.
Voy reached out with his right hand and ran his fingers along the new arm’s surface, noting its utter lack of blemish or imperfection. It was even slightly warm, like a real arm should have been. Any trepidation Voy had about receiving a bionic appendage dissolved further with every second he spent admiring the master craftsmanship before him.
Undahiil’s unspeaking mouth curled into a knowing smile. “Let’s get this plugged in, eh?” Undahiil said patting Voy on the shoulder. Voy nodded and hopped up on a raised circular platform flanked by two of the floating spherical drones. He dropped his sword from over his shoulder and onto the platform, eliciting an irritated series of beeps from the bot to his right. The other hovered over to his empty arm sleeve and pecked at it a few times with one of it’s dexfils before grabbing it and lifting it out to his side. In response the other drone zipped over and neatly sliced away the superfluous fabric with a cutting laser.
The material slip-suits were made from didn’t burn, but the heat did cause it to shrink and furl in to reveal some of Voy’s shoulder. Both drones then sidled up to the stump of his left arm and extended a needle which they pressed into his skin without warning. Tingles shot through his arm as if it had been asleep. Jerking sensations and spasms rippled out as feedback from the arm’s link to his nervous system. Held aloft between two of Undahiil’s dexfils the arm thrashed and twitched madly, animated by a wave of disjointed and uncalibrated neurological data. Undahiil tapped away at a screenslab in front of him, also held aloft by yet more dexfils.
Typing away at the screen brought gradual calm to the wayward appendage and slowly Voy began to feel he could move it. Playing at his limits, Voy willed his pointer finger to stiffen while watching the limb. Sure enough it straightened in a pointing position. Voy’s heartbeat quickened in excitement.
“Stop that. Unless you want that finger flexing randomly on you that is,” Undahiil commanded from behind his screen, “I’m setting the baseline right now, defining what the arm should be doing when you aren’t trying to move it,” he paused and let out the mechanical equivalent of a grumble, “You have an absurd amount of nerve activation, even for a kartorim. If I didn’t know better-and bear in mind nerves are not my area of expertise- I’d say you should be in nearly debilitating pain right now, all over,” he looked up at Voy. Voy returned his observation with a shrug.
“It is what it is,” Voy said with a hollow smile. Undahiil’s clinical curiosity morphed into something else and he turned his head back to the screenslab.
“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Undahiil began to type madly, drafting a few of his dexfils to assist with his inhuman, frantic pace. There wasn’t an immediate effect, but after a few moments an indescribable wash of relief flooded across his new arm. It was as though the searing heat of his blood had finally been quenched, the caustic sting of his nerves salved and the ceaseless contraction of his muscle bade to relax. The rest of him still hurt terribly, but this new arm… for the first time in years, part of him didn’t hurt.
Relief could be just as debilitating as pain, and in the moment Voy dropped to one knee on the raised platform. He breathed in shallow rasps, bordering on shock’s erratic equivalent. Undahiil paused his typing and looked up at Voy.
“I think I fixed the issue where I could, at least for your new arm. Can you confirm?” Undahiil asked with cheeky indifference. With a slack jawed smile Voy looked up and gave a slow affirmative nod. “Excellent!” Undahiil wiggled a few of his dexfils in the air,” Sadly I cannot do the same for your fleshy bits. If you aren’t too attached to them though, I could certainly upgrade more of you to metal once we’re done with the Darkmount.” Voy didn’t offer a yes or no to the suggestion, genuinely milling over the possibility of going full send on bionics. If it meant the end of the constant background pain… maybe.
Detecting his indecision Undahiil let the matter drop and began to conduct a number of sphere drones to carry the arm over to Voy and line it up for mounting. Detached from their needles, the two sphere drones that had flanked him earlier floated out of the way as new drones carried the arm into position. Two connection points roughly the size of the inserted needles were visible.
“This may pinch a bit,” Undahiil brought his hand up to his chin and tapped it a few times, “actually more than a pinch. It’ll hurt quite a bit. The arm has to mesh-anchor to your skeleton. I’m told anesthetics don’t work on your kind, so sadly there isn’t really a way to make it more pleasant. But, it’s a one and done thing, won’t ever need to do it again. Brace yourself!” The drones, cued by a flick of Undahiil’s hand, connected the arm to the needle ends left in Voy’s arm stump.
Immediately Voy felt hundreds, no, thousands of microscopic wires lash out from the arm and run through the needles and into his flesh. They tore their way through cell linings and tissue membranes, coiling around anything solid enough to do so before melting into bone and muscle. On they wove until tendrils of arcane polymers and animated metal had bound itself to the make of his skeleton and muscle, seamlessly bonded by tearing away scar tissue and forcing itself in between existing matter without regard for pain.
It was as Undahiil described, horribly painful. A living, thrashing pair of wire brushes were essentially scrubbing apart the matter in his shoulder and burring the tines within. For anyone else, it may have forced a cry or shout in surrender to the sensation, but in this one area Voy had more experience than perhaps any other. He clenched his jaw, biting down hard on his own teeth until the burning was no longer dynamic. Gradually the mesh cables settled into position, and his arm no longer felt foreign. S if to punctuate the experience more of the gold sealant Undahiil had used elsewhere on the arm seeped out and filled the edge gap where the arm met his flesh, at once defining both the barrier of his flesh and the metal affixed to it and seamlessly joining the two as one.
Apart from his breathing and wildly beating heart Voy remained still. He dare not move without Undahiil’s instruction, ruining the calibration now was an unthinkable risk he did not wish to entertain. The Jeremayne tapped a few more times on the screen held in front of him.
“Give your fingers a wiggle if you don’t mind,” sphere drones began to orbit around Voy at their master’s instruction, bathing him in vertical slices of green light as they scanned over his being. Restraining his excitement Voy cautiously wavered his fingers and thumb, opening and closing his hand. The movement was slow and deliberate. Voy savored every new movement, relishing the painless compliance of his new hand.
“Good! Excellent! Next I need to check grip, squish that,” again at his order a sphere drone carried over another small metal ball. It was the same size and shape as the sphere drone but where its eye would have been lay a hole into a hollow interior. Voy rose to his feet and reached out to the drone.
“You sure you don’t need this?” Voy asked as he took the shell from the drone’s dangling grip. Undahiil waved a dismissive hand.
“That housing is flawed, a few millimeters too thick all the way around. Have at it.” With Undahiil’s approval, Voy clamped his hand around the hollow sphere and squeezed, his new synthetic muscle thrumming to life as it drew energy in and forced closed his hand. Metal buckled and bent before collapsing completely as the drone shell became crumpled scrap within his closed fist. The final crunch brought with it an involuntary smile as Voy felt the last bit of resistance fade from the once sphere. An open hand released the crumpled mess to fall and clatter to the floor. Before Undahiil could tee up another test the intercom speakers in the room crackled to life.
[KARTORIM VOY REPORT TO WAR ROOM. KARTORIM VOY REPORT TO WAR ROOM.]
Undahiil and Voy traded eye contact. What exquisite timing.
“I should probably go to that,” Voy relented, hopping down from the platform and retrieving his sword. Undahiil let out a sigh.
“I suppose. Your arm should be good to go, but take it slow,” he clicked the screenslab off and let one of his dexfils whisk it away. “One thing though, before you go. I put a shield cap inside your arm, it should automatically deploy with but a thought, but kartorim anatomy, especially yours, is finicky at best. Don’t count on it without some trial first.”
Looking down at the arm Voy tried to figure out where there was room for any add-ons, it wasn’t any larger than his flesh and blood arm had been. Tabling his curiosity for later, Voy reached out his right arm in Undahiil’s direction.
“Thank you, really. It’s been years since…” Voy trailed off, lacking words he felt adequately described the euphoria of even a portion of his pain’s removal.
“Don’t mention it, you saved a lot of people I hold dear during that attack,” he accepted Voy’s handshake and smiled warmly, “Namely me. But others too. Consider this my way of saying thanks.” Voy nodded and turned for the door.
“See you planet-side,” Voy called as he left, the great doors slid closed behind him. Thanks. Voy milled the word around in his head. It stuck in a way not much did. In the last five years he could scarcely remember one time anyone on Treffel had uttered the word in regard to him, save for the duke’s grandson when Voy brought him moegon trophies. He hadn’t realized how much it would mean, to have someone appreciate his life risking efforts.
He could muse upon it later. With his new arm attached he was as whole as he could be. Hembrandt wanted to see him, and Voy was eager to make his acquaintance.
