CHAPTER THREE: The Birth of Fate

The Pit hung, ebony jewel in the Uranian sky, like an obsidian vise, its empty jaws gaping at the gargantuan cyan vortex around which it spun.

The Pit had been a construct, built by the Ancients or the Daedalus Concordance, to house the Uranian Gravity Pyre. In fact, rumor had it that all of the mysterious Pyres, designed to keep the Peregrine out of the Drift, had been constructed in the Pit, making it the forge in which the hope of Humanity had its fires stoked; without the Pyres, the Peregrine would have driven Humans, and probably a number of other races, to extinction in a matter of decades.

While Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune all had moons massive enough to sustain the powerful Pyres, Uranus did not, and thus the use of the Pit as a substitute had been deemed necessary. Through time, the Pit also became a military staging area and a frontier trade outpost, maintained by the colonists of Titania, Ariel and Umbriel.

Untold millennia ago, the Peregrine had yet again attempted to escape his self-made prison in the Periphery, and slipped past the two outermost Pyres in his huge Starship. He was intercepted by a human fleet, which forced him close enough to Uranus to be trapped by the Gravity Pyre housed in the Pit. Cornered by the fleet, and with mere days to spare before the weapons of the fortress world of Oberon came into range, the Peregrine had one of those moments of sheer, blinding brilliance that can only be brought about by advanced desperation.

Launching a feint at the human flagship, the massive stone dreadnought Leap Of Faith, he drew it to within five thousand miles of the Pit. Then, utilizing Power Cores stolen from the Outer Reach outposts he habitually raided, the Peregrine fired the huge warship directly at the Pit, dislodging the Gravity Pyre and sending it spiraling into Uranus’s aquamarine depths, while the Leap Of Faith went on a wild gravitational ride, eventually coming to rest in orbit around Titania.

Unfortunately for the Peregrine, his fight with the fixed-ground installations on Oberon progressed less smoothly, and he was forced to limp back to the Periphery, his only consolation that he had successfully destroyed one of the only five devices in the Drift of which he had no technological understanding.

But even in this, he was thwarted. The Third Pyre was thought lost for probably hundreds and possibly thousands of millennia, until methane prospectors (for methane was highly prized as a catalyst in plasma weapons, and as a narcotic by the Demons of Venus, although few were brazen enough to trade with them) stumbled upon an amazing find: a floating island of organic life, suspended deep in Uranus’s troposphere, with the Gravity Pyre at the center. It seemed the Pyre’s power had somehow given birth to life within the oppressive murk of the gas giant, with interlocking expanses of vaguely stable microbial plant life forming a muddy base, hundreds of thousands of miles wide.

The prospectors had welcomed this: instead of risking their often rather ramshackle flitters in the strong Uranian winds, they could set up shop in the relative comfort of the marshland, harvesting gas that could then be floated to the surface with power cores and picked up by flitters running out of Ariel and Umbriel. A hardscrabble settlement was founded, with disastrous results.

Emerging from the diluted methane fog like nightmarish horrors came the Pus-Tra, massive, green-skinned primates spawned out of the Energy Pyre’s accelerated evolutionary arms race. Although not as vicious as the Saurians, as powerful as the Demons, nor as technologically advanced as the Glyphids, the Pus-Tra more than made up for this with their brute strength and bitter hatred of Humanity. They eventually founded their own kingdom in what came to be known as the Tightrope. Violent regime changes and wars with the Human Worlds were frequent.

Throughout all this, the Pit had kept a silent vigil over Uranus, forgotten for the most part, except as the occasional staging area for missions to the Tightrope when the Aether Gate was not an option. Transients, weapons smugglers and refugees had been a near-permanent presence, and underhanded goings-on had the norm.

That is, until the Saurians took over. After the Last Peregrine War, the Pit had been ceded to the Saurians as part of the armistice, and had become a steady source of income and racial pride for the reptiles ever since. They used the station’s twin Power Cores to siphon methane from the gas giant below, either directly or through independent contractors of various races, and then selling or trading it, with a Trademaster, or Kannok, appointed every local epoch.

The current Trademaster-Kannok was a striking, emerald-scaled warrior by the name of Skreeok. He was a thirty-year veteran of a grand total of eight wars of various lengths, three of them fighting for the Peregrine, two for the Concordance and the last three for his people. He bore numerous scars, the most horrid of which was undoubtedly the one that began on the rear right of his cranium and continued on down his back, across his shoulder blade and to the ribs under his right arm.

Skreeok calmly, patiently strode into the Pit’s conference room, a domed space at the station’s apex. The room’s ceiling was a massive concave viewport, carved by Saurian artisans to replace the original ceiling, an opaque slab of the enigmatic obsidian alloy that the Ancients had constructed all their space stations out of. The view was largely blackness, with the rich white speckling of a starfield, but the meeting that was about to take place had been carefully timed to coincide with the rise of Ariel, that most distinguished of Uranian moons.

The individual who had engineered this timing was the Human woman already seated by the large, oval table that dominated the room. Lady Chloe, a Huntress of Ariel and High Sylph of House Termagant, cut a striking figure. Her translucent bodywear, cut of the finest Crispissan cloth, contrasted with her alabaster skin in a way obviously reminiscent of stars against space, and her severe black-on-white face paint, an homage to her days as a Salamander in the Puck War, drew attention to her piercing gray eyes and small mouth. The bodywear did little to hinder a display of the finely toned body of a woman in prime physical condition; the muscles of the thighs and abdomen were plainly visible through the cloth, and while her underthings were more than dark enough to conceal her privates, their form-fitting nature left precious little to the imagination.

She cast a satisfied glance upwards at her homeworld, the glitter of Mystic City a cluster of yellow pinpricks on the dusk terminator, as Skreeok and his host of Snarrel and Rantor dignitaries filed in and placed themselves on cushioned stools specifically designed to support the reptiles while leaving their muscular tails unobstructed. Lady Chloe's own entourage, Sylphs, Salamanders and Nymphs, remained standing in the noblewoman’s presence.

“My greetings to you, Lady Chloe of the Protectorate,” Skreeok snarled, referring to the loose alliance of Human governments Ariel belonged to. “I speak on behalf of the elders of the Pit and my people throughout Gavelor when I say how proud I am, and we are, that these talks will be held here. I did not have to consider the request for more than a heartbeat, before acceding to it.”

Chloe flinched internally, but kept her features blank. ‘Gavelor’ was a term used by the Concordance to refer to the Drift. She did not care much for the Concordance, and their meddling with worlds they had no business even being on. And the way this… reptile was insinuating he had any authority to deny her access to the Pit made her fume. The Pit was Ariel’s by right, as were all of Uranus’s moons.

Out loud, she said, “And my greetings to you, Kannok. Allow me to express my deepest condolences for the loss of your son,” but even in this she gave no ground. Mourning the dead was considered the height of disrespect among Saurians, and two members of Skreeok’s retinue visibly bristled. Furthermore, it told the old lizard in no uncertain terms that Ariel’s intelligence network didn’t miss much.

“Thank you. I trust your own offspring will soon begin killing each other to assert dominance. Whom do you favor, Cynthia or Clarissa?”

Touché. “Soon,” Chloe replied curtly, not risking the loss of face she would suffer by correcting him. “And I have not come to favor one nor the other, Kannok.”

The Kannok bared his teeth in an intentionally ambiguous smile. “But I am sure you did not make your way here to trade pleasantries. While we wait for our esteemed friend to arrive, perhaps you could… assuage my curiosity regarding this meeting of yours. What is it you hope to achieve with your negotiations?”

“My friend, I do not ‘hope to achieve’ anything by negotiations,” Chloe said, pouring water from a flagon on the table into a stone cup. “Sa’Til is a war criminal, and the only business we would conduct with him would end in a trial and an execution.” She took a long sip, glancing out of the viewport as a shipping flitter passed by it, its hold no doubt packed with spin-sealed methane bound for the markets of Titan or somewhere closer to the Interior. “It was he who initiated this discussion, not my government, nor I.”

“Perhaps he seeks to amend this rift in your relations. Perhaps he seeks legitimacy.”

“That or another hand-out, in exchange for something he thinks we want. I hear he lost one of his bases in a Glyphid raid recently,” Chloe offered dismissively, brushing something off the tabletop.

Chloe expected the old reptile to inquire about the raid, but he merely approximated a shrug and said, “Your government’s trade with his soldiers is to be commended. I doubt there are many others who would so brazenly defy Concordance edict.”

That, Chloe had to admit, was a clever blow. Ariel had on occasion traded with the warlord, offering him food and ammunition in exchange for weapons and metals pilfered from the Interior. The Concordance did indeed frown upon this, as in fact did the Protectorate, and Skreeok’s comment left little doubt as to the Saurians’ opinion of it. This strongly limited her options in the unlikely event that Sa’Til did have something Ariel wanted or needed; whatever transpired here would likely be reported directly to the Concordance. You little snitch, Chloe thought as she smiled benevolently at the Kannok.

“Thank you,” she said. “We believe the government he represents is innocent of the charges he faces. To hold an entire populace accountable for the actions of one man would be… infantile.” This neatly summed up the Saurian elders’ way of thinking.

“My people agree. That is why I lament that the man himself will not be present at the meeting, only his indentured servants, whom harming would be in breach of Concordance law.”

What? Chloe silently panicked. He’s not coming? “Yes,” she said out loud, masking her surprise with a contemplative smile. “Hopefully, they can provide some semblance of an explanation.”

At that exact moment, a red-and-blue-armored Glyphid Drone burst into the room, trailed by a hodgepodge of armed and armored Humans, Pus-Tra, Saurians, cyborgs and other Glyphids.

“An explanation? Of what? To whom? And what, precisely, would be so hopeful about it? Hmm?” the Glyphid known as Slave screeched a barrage of questions at the Human and Saurian delegations as he marched toward the table. “We have no need to explain anything,” he continued, taking an awkward seat in a chair not designed for his slight build. “It is we to whom explanations are owed, such as one pertaining to your refusal, your unwillingness, your obstinate bias, your exclusion. Why do you not share with us your knowledge and your technology? Are we not all servants of Gavelor, risking our lives for her glory?”

“If you are referring to our refusal to grant you a seat on the Protectorate council, then the answer is simple: you are not a unified planetary government, and your leader is a warlord, and an enemy of the Concordance,” Chloe answered flatly.

“But so are you, are you not? Yes? An enemy of the Concordance? And yet you sit at this table, unmolested!”

“So do you, Slave,” Skreeok grumbled as if to a difficult child. “You would be strongly advised to maintain a civil tone, if you wish to have your voice heard here.”

“You would not admonish a Pus-Tra, a Human, a Saurian or even a Blind One so,” Slave retorted, cocking his head self-righteously.

“You are right, I would not, for they have not given me cause to.”

“Of course they have. Who are they to challenge your race, your mighty warriors, to soil your precious Pit with their filthy footsteps? You should deny us all passage, and make war on your Concordance,” Slave scoffed, jabbing a claw at Lady Chloe.

“And see peace disintegrate before our very eyes? The peace we created?” the Kannok bellowed, truly incensed.

“Peace!” the word was a mocking laugh from Slave’s mandibles. “You speak of a peace purchased with your people’s dignity! Where is your pride? Your purpose? Your preference for the preservation of past power? Your p-“

“Very well, Slave!” Chloe barked, losing her patience for the insect’s grandstanding. “First you beg for inclusion and membership, and then you sow dissent and argue for dissolution! Make up your mind!”

“My begging, Lady Chloe, was merely to prove a point,” Slave sneered, slightly calmer as he slouched laconically in his chair. “The point being that Humans have subjugated the other races of the Drift since time immemorial. When will it be time for Saurians to decide their own fate? Or Ophions, or Stoneskin?”

“Is this really what you came here to discuss? The Ophions lost the war, as did the Glyphids and the Pus-Tra and everyone else who sided with the Peregrine.”

“But the Saurians did not! Did not their reversal of loyalty save the Human race from certain doom? They turned on their master, their very creator, risking life and limb, and you do not even reward them with their own homeland? You consign them to this floating hunk of metal?” Slave gestured at the station around them.

“Excuse me, but the Saurians did not ‘side with the Peregrine’ any more than you ‘sided’ with Humanity, Lady Chloe,” Skreeok interjected. “We were his servants, and turned on him when his true face was revealed to us at the Battle of Wicked Dance.”

“You’re not actually buying into all this crap, are you?” Chloe inquired with raised eyebrows.

“No, merely discerning your attitude on the subject. It is important we all know where we stand.”

Chloe actually rolled her eyes at that, and stood. “Look, if both of you are quite done with your history lesson-“

“No, not quite. Where do you stand on all this, Lady Chloe? Do you believe the Saurians should be granted equal status on the Concordance council? Granted a homeworld, perhaps? SIT DOWN, Lady Chloe.”

In the short silence that followed Slave’s outburst, Skreeok thought he heard something. Only one person in the room knew it, but a button had just been pressed.

“No,” Chloe said, visibly perturbed. “No, I don’t think I will. It is evident we have precious little to discuss here, and my presence here is of little purpose. Call me when your master wants to talk about something real.”

“Lady Chloe, forgive me for intruding, but it seems presumptuous of you to simply leave. Slave is merely trying to establish a dialogue here, from the ground up, so to speak,” the Kannok ventured, gesturing to the Glyphid. “Am I not right, Slave?”

“So to speak, yes. Our master feels it is time for a more… results-based approach to his problems.”

“His problems?”

“Yes. Namely the Protectorate’s unwillingness to include him in their decision-making process. This… preference for Concordance law and regulations is weakening your stance in the Outback and in the Interior, and it smacks of cronyism. We reach a hand out to you in particular, Lady Chloe, because your people have, on occasion, traded with us in the past, and perhaps you could assist us in building that bridge towards legitimacy.”

Skreeok and Chloe exchanged glances, but Chloe remained standing. “Legitimacy?” she scoffed, incredulous. “Your master is a warlord who took power by force, and moreover-“

“Shht! Do you hearrr that?” Skreeok growled.

They all fell silent, straining to hear.

“I hear nothing. What are you playing at, Kannok?” Chloe barked.

“That. There. What is that?”

And then they all heard it: a slow, hoarse, moan, like a cold wind or gate on a poorly-oiled hinge. It had been too low, too indistinct, or perhaps just too horrifyingly surreal to take heed of, but now that they heard it, it was unmistakable.

“What in the Shining Rows is that?” Chloe said, barely keeping the tremble out of her voice.

“Deadmen,” Skreeok said, his voice low and unkind. He rose from his chair, powered up his gauntlet and barked an order to one of his Snarrel batsmen.

“Deadmen? Here?” This time, Chloe was unable to keep the fear out of her voice, but she was somewhat surprised to find that the soldier within her was already on her feet, had already cocked her 60 Cal.

“It’s true!” Slave squealed. “I remember those sounds… you set us up!”

Chloe spun to find the diminutive Glyphid was pointing an assault rifle at her. Skreeok’s batsman had by now given the Kannok an assault rifle of his own, which he was quick to train on Slave.

“Gentlemen,” Chloe said, voice level. “Let’s not get unduly agitated. If there are Deadmen on the Pit, there are ways of dealing with them that I’m sure you’re both familiar with, yes? Ways that do not include training guns on those who would fight them beside you!”

“Hurrrnt. Very well,” Skreeok said, lowering the rifle. Slave did the same, albeit much slower. He kept his unreadable insect eyes trained on the Kannok, however. Their respective lackeys remained tense.

“Now, Kannok, if you’d be so kind. What’s the best way out of here? And do we have any idea where the intruders are?”

Skreeok touched a button on his gauntlet, and conversed tersely with the tinny reptilian voice that greeted him on the other end of the transmission.

“The Eastern Docks,” he said. “My chief of security says they have already killed four guards and are heading here through the transit tunnels.”

“Here? How could they be ‘heading’ anywhere? Aren’t they mindless beasts?” Slave asked.

“Generally, unless someone is calling to them with a blood mark.”

“That means the being responsible for bringing them here is inside this very room.”

The tension built as Chloe, Skreeok and Slave regarded each other with increased suspicion. Chloe did not think of herself as a terribly religious person, but words from Ariel's sacred texts came to her sometimes. A passage from the second canto rang in her head:

With beating hearts the dire event they wait,
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of Fate

Slave finally exploded. “You!” he squealed, raising his rifle at Chloe. “You wanted this meeting held here in the Apex! It’s close to the docks, and you saw the opportunity to off us while protecting your own –“

“I did nothing of the sort! You and your ilk –“

“Beings! Stand down before –“

But that’s as far as Skreeok got before the first hole appeared in the deck four feet from where Chloe was standing and a Deadman hobbled out. Little more than a walking corpse, it had evidently been a Snarrel at one point, but now, its skin had rotted off and its bowels had dried away, leaving fading, dried musculature attached to yellow bones. Horrid lidless eyes saw nothing as the Deadman groped blindly in Chloe’s direction.

Chloe brought up her Cal, but one of the Sylphs in her retinue dived between her and the undead warrior, only to shriek in terror as the Deadman’s claws punctured his chest, spraying it with dark arterial blood. The Sylph whimpered, drowning in his own fluids. The Deadman again reached for Chloe, but its skull exploded from a Saurian hollow-point, peppering Chloe’s face with bone fragments.

It was Skreeok’s headshot that had taken the Deadman out, but more had appeared. The alchemy of Deadside could turn any material into a portal, and through the portals came Deadmen; six more were now in the conference room with them, wreaking havoc as Slave’s mercenaries poured bullets and superheated plasma into them, unaware that they were impossible to truly kill.

Some of the Deadmen still had vocal cords, and snarled hellishly as they ripped their opponents to shreds. One of Slave’s human mercs emptied an entire clip from his pistol into a Pus-Tra Deadman. The merc was still trying to put a fresh one into the gun when the zombie literally ripped the man in half. The torso was flung onto the conference table, scattering water flagons and cups as its arms flailed uselessly; the man lived long enough to watch most of his insides dribble out of his ribcage. More Deadmen came.

Skreeok’s warriors were a bit more on the ball. Simple precision shots from their gauntlets splattered two of the Deadmen, leaving them useless piles of meat on the deck, before Skreeok pointed at the former Pus-Tra and barked an order. The Rantors directed their fire at the designated target, securing its attention while Skreeok drew his RA flare gun, charged it to 600% and fired. The resulting flare was volleyed into the Deadman’s chest.

The former Pus-Tra warrior, which had bounded onto the stone table by now in its mad lunge at the Saurians on the other side of the room, howled in agony as the purple-glowing radioactive charge immolated its flesh and melted its bones; even Deadmen were not immune to pain. More Deadmen came.

Slave’s mercs were all dead by now, and Slave had retreated onto the tabletop, spraying bullets from his assault rifle into a horde of at least a dozen strong as they came for him, clambering over chairs and corpses. One of Chloe’s Salamanders peppered the horde with darts from an inflator rifle, creating horrid, balloon-like blisters whenever they struck skin. A bullet or two from Slave’s barrage managed to find the pockets of superheated gas, popping them like firecrackers and sending ropes of dry, long-dead flesh flying around the room. Still more Deadmen came.

A portal opened on the wall behind the Rantor immediately to Skreeok’s left as he was inserting a new clip into his assault rifle, and the emerging Deadman, an eviscerated husk that had evidently once been a Glyphid drone, raked the Rantor with its claws, peeling the skin and muscle off his abdomen and ribs as his intestines bubbled to the floor with horrifyingly wet plops. Skreeok whirled, assault rifle in each hand and fired blindly, making sure he caught his warrior in the head before pouring his wrath into the Deadman. Yet more Deadmen came.

“We need to get out of this room,” Chloe cried desperately as she fired, fired and fired some more. Tears ran freely down her cheeks; Chloe wore them with pride.

“Agreed. The topside hatches from the apex kitchens and maintenance rooms open into a foyer behind you,” Skreeok roared as he finished off the once-Glyphid.

“Got it. Fall back on my mark.”

Skreeok spared her a look. “Rantors do not ‘fall back,’ milady. They die, at the hand of another Rantor, preferably.”

“But this battle is lost, and you are unhurt. Live to fight another day, Kannok, so that your people and your station can survive. They need you, and we would all die pointlessly here.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a blood-curdling shriek as Slave’s arm was severed from his torso, ripped off by a Deadman whose head and chest were riddled with arrows. Slave, his rifle ammo depleted, had switched to his crossbow, which now laid useless at his feet as the insect clutched his stump in agony.

The Deadmen around him held back, as if momentarily bewildered by Slave’s outburst. Slave looked up, glared at the throng for an instant, and then bounded into them with a crazed Glyphid war cry, slashing furiously with his remaining talon. He felled three of them before they overcame him, severing his remaining limbs.

“Pleeeeease,” he whimpered, and Skreeok put a bullet through his eye.

“Your point is well seen, Lady Chloe. I will lead the way.”

***

Slave’s death cries were still ringing in her ears as Chloe bounded through the transit tunnels to the station’s western dock, where her flitter sat. Two Rantors stood guard at the end of the tunnel; Skreeok waved himself, Chloe and the five other survivors from the meeting room, a Snarrel, an Rantor, a wounded Sylph and two Nymphs through to the dock.

The dock was a massive, flat triangular field that sat under open space, protected from the elements (or lack thereof) by the station’s upper power core, located a dozen decks below them. Over the edge, Chloe could see Uranus, turquoise and teal in its indifferent glory.

A variety of flitters lay scattered across the dock. Word about the attack must have been spreading: already, beings of all races were hurrying to their flitters, emerging from the lower levels through the deck hatches that lay at regular intervals, carrying valuables and essentials.

“It’s an exodus. Everything my people and I have worked for…” Skreeok heaved his shoulders as the flitters took off, whooshing silently into open space. Chloe felt indebted to the old reptile, or at least an obligation to learn the truth.

“Whoever did this must have visited Titan to capture the Deadmen. We could go there and investigate, bring the culprits to justice.”

But Skreeok turned his head to look at her, a growing fire in his eyes. “No, Lady Chloe. Still you do not understand. The Pit is our ground. Our home. I fight here, or I fight nowhere.”

“But –“

“Go and investigate, if you must. But I have a station to protect. And perhaps, when it pleases you, you can return to our home with the fruits of your investigation, and together we can deliberate on what to do with them.”

And then, Chloe understood. The Saurians did not seek to conquer, they simply sought to equal. They had discovered only a few years ago that they were not truly a race, but a genetic construct, a bio-engineered army bred to do the Peregrine’s bidding. They had never before understood what it was to protect something, fight for an ideal they believed in; they had only sought to destroy and steal from their enemies.

No, thought Chloe. Not their enemies, but the Peregrine’s. They’ve never really had enemies of their own.

But now they did. And as Chloe’s flitter sped toward Titan, she watched the Pit shrink behind her, knowing that the being who sought to make Skreeok and the Saurians his or her enemy was either very foolish, or very powerful. Very powerful indeed.