Varlin

It’s not that I enjoyed using Bryce like this. Hells, I still considered her one of my closest friends. But business is business, and I needed to buy myself enough time to find the real relic or I’d lose more than just my promotion. Besides, whatever she was planning with Dr. Phaylex would never work. Corporations don’t take kindly to that sort of blackmail, or any sort of blackmail, for that matter.

She was already destined for the gallows, and if playing the hangman for a dear friend was my path to salvation, then so be it. But first, I had another sin to commit.

I stepped out of the elevator onto the 61st deck and made my way to the communications center. The door opened as I approached to reveal Vizzek sitting behind his desk. The creature was smiling at me with nothing but cruelty behind its dead eyes.

Vizzek was a celestial of Lord Garo. Much like all the God-Emperor’s creations, he was undead, and gods below did he look it. His skin was stretched tightly against an emaciated frame and his eyes were green specks floating in a dark void of nothingness. The effect was creepy as all the hells, and it made my skin crawl.

“Admiral, please come in. Have a seat.” Vizzek spoke with such vile disdain that it was difficult for me to take him seriously. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you about certain things that have come to light regarding our presence on Zephili.”

“Oh, I’m not here for business, Vizzek,” I grinned as I felt power well up in my chest. “This is purely for pleasure.”

The creature’s eyes went wide as I flooded the room with a wave of necromantic energy. He may be a powerful celestial, but undead was still undead.

“Come forward and Kneel!” I ordered, empowering my words with mana. Vizzek moved mechanically, and his murderous glare never left me as he followed the command. “I don’t know why you never liked me, or why you felt the need to undermine me at every bend. But understand this, creature, I blame you for everything that I’ve had to do to maintain my command.”

“If I had only been given the freedom to do my job, then I never would have had to go to such extremes just to hold the greatest gift that Legion has ever received.” I started pacing in front of the kneeling celestial. “ If you had just overlooked the little things, then I wouldn’t have to work so hard to maintain the charade, and I could have found the real relic by now.”

Vizzek was visibly straining against the command, and the look of fury in his eyes brought a smile to my face. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” I asked, before commanding. “Speak.”

“You’ve already sealed your fate, ex-admiral,” the celestial spat. “Kill me now and I’ll return to our lord’s domain. I’ll be granted immunity to your magic, and I'll hunt you till the end of time. Your actions today will mean your death. One way or another.”

“That’s assuming you make it to Garo's domain.” I smirked as I reached deep into the celestial’s spirit-self to grip his soul with my will and started to pull.

Vizzek’s eyes went wide as he realized what I intended to do. “You wouldn’t dare-”

“Be silent!” I ordered and then pulled harder. Stripping a soul was supposed to be difficult, but the damn thing wasn’t budging. I poured more and more mana into my grip, pulling as hard as my will allowed. “Stop resisting, you piece of shit.”

My request turned to a command, and Vizzek’s soul tore free, launching me back into the far wall with the force of the release. In the end, a golden sphere of light with emerald green lines snaking across it floated between me and the still kneeling celestial.

“Goodbye Vizzek. I’ll see you on the other side.” I stood with a grin and the soul shattered into golden particles of mana. “Or wait, I suppose I won’t.”

Vizzek’s withered corpse fell to the ground, and I felt myself swell from the excess power. A bit of revenge felt like a pretty great way to start off the evening, and it did wonders for my mood.

I whistled on my way back to the elevator as I sent Captain Krisc an urgent message to meet me in my quarters. It was now time for step two.

It wasn’t a long walk back, and I was surprised to see the orcish captain already waiting for me in the hallway.

“Captain Krisc, I’m glad you were able to make it here so quickly,” I said, as I walked past the stern woman and through the door. “I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news about our associate and the executive.”

“Do you?” She asked, while following me into the room. “I was already on my way to your quarters for a different purpose. But your message sounded urgent, so mine can wait.”

“I’ve always enjoyed that about you, captain. You're relentlessly efficient.” I walked over to the corner bar and poured myself a drink. “Would you like something? I requisitioned a few bottles of Firefrost whiskey. I’d be happy to open one for you.”

“Maybe another time, admiral. When I'm not on duty,” She answered. “Would you mind telling me what this urgent message is about?”

“Of course. It's a nasty bit of business,” I sighed. “I made a mistake when I asked the executive to help with the negotiations. It turns out she was renounced by her corporation about a month ago, and she made a deal with the Theocracy to kill Vizzek in an attempt to force us to leave.”

“You’re sure about this?” The captain asked. “If that’s the case, we’ll need to protect Vizzek.”

“It’s too late, I’m afraid,” I turned back to the captain and finished my drink for effect. “Vizzek is already dead. His soul was shattered.”

“Shattered?” Captain Krisc maintained her stoic demeanor. “How would she do that all the way from the theocran ship?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head with a sigh. “But it’s not the first time she’s done something like this. Apparently, it’s what caused her corporation to renounce her.”

“Really?” the captain asked. “That’s not what I heard.”

“What have you heard?” I narrowed my eyes at the woman. “Why were you outside my quarters earlier?”

First, I heard the shot, then I saw the gun in Krisc’s hand. And finally, I felt the bullet in my gut.

“You know, I didn’t believe it at first. When I saw the evidence, I thought there’s no way he would do something so verifiably stupid.” She spoke calmly as I caught myself on the bar. “I was just here to arrest you. I thought we’d just hold you in your quarters until we could prove your innocence.” Emotion was beginning to slip into the captain’s voice. “But then I received a message from Vizzek as you were stripping his soul. He even recorded you shattering it before he died. So, now I know that the executive was right. Arrest was never an option.”

“I didn’t…” My vision was fading, but I could still see the captain’s smirk.

“You didn’t what?” She asked. “Know the celestial had implants? That he knew how to use them? Or was it that you didn’t realize you had been outsmarted?”

“That’s not it.” There was a lot of blood, and I had to shake my head to clear my thoughts. “I didn’t want to have to do this.” I reached out towards the captain with a blood-soaked hand and tore the soul from her body. Then I shattered it before funneling the excess mana into a spell to close the wound in my gut. Necromancy wasn’t the most efficient way to heal, but it worked in a pinch. Especially when you had the extra mana to spend.

I stood up straight, and despite the blood, did my best to look presentable. Shattering a soul wasn’t something I had ever imagined myself doing, and now, thanks to Bryce, I’d done it twice. I had to admit; it wasn’t as bad as I imagined, and it was definitely a lot easier when you weren't doing it to a celestial.

If Krisc was there to arrest me, then Bryce must have found the evidence that the Theocracy had been sending me repeatedly over the last year. And if Bryce told Krisc, then she likely told other people. Which meant I didn’t have the time or means to implement my original plan.

It had been a long shot from the start, and really just to buy me more time to find that gods forsaken relic. But it was too late now, and at this point I was done with Legion. Or at least, Legion would be done with me. Six centuries wasted climbing the corporate ladder, all to end with a single bad negotiation.

There were worse fates I suppose. There would always be other options, other plans, and other opportunities. But first, I needed to survive this one. So, I stepped over Krisc’s corpse and into the hallway to go find Jayne.

The navigator spent nearly every waking moment on the engineering deck. The Skull Candy was a big ship, which meant it had a lot of little problems. Those problems kept Jayne busy pretty much constantly, and I was betting on that to keep him out of the loop. It felt like a safe bet. The boy was usually clueless.

I smiled as I found him near the main reactor. He was sitting at a folding table reading a tablet while he ate something out of a bowl. Whatever he was eating ended up on the ground when he finally noticed me.

“Admiral!” He shouted. “That’s a lot of blood. Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, or at least I will be.” I faked a limp as I walked towards him. “Somehow the executive got to Captain Krisc, it was some sort of mind control magic I think. She attacked me and I nearly died.”

“Where’s the captain now?” Jayne asked. He had to know the answer, or at least he could find out easily enough. So why was he asking? He had to be in on it already, which meant I needed to act fast.

“In my cabin, she’s dead. She shot me, and I was forced to kill her.” I sighed, hamming it up to pretend like I didn’t know that he knew. “Listen, Jayne, we need to shift now. There’s no way to know who is under the executive’s spell. We need to get out of the system.”

“Right, we can… we can do that.” Jayne nodded a few too many times. “We’re not far from the beacon, maybe 5 minutes from its range. We can shift once we reach it.”

“5 minutes? Why are we so close?” I asked. We would be able to get out of the system much faster than I thought, which was good. But that meant the ship was moved without my knowing, and that was a problem.

“Captain’s orders,” Jayne said. “We received an answer to that encrypted message you sent earlier, and we were moving to meet them near the beacon when they arrive.”

That message had been for a Legion secure transport to come collect Bryce. But they weren’t supposed to arrive until after we were ‘forced’ to destroy the ship she was on. And that wasn’t until tomorrow at the earliest.

“Right, well, activate the transponder. We’ll meet them in the Aether.” I turned to walk away. “I’ll be in the hangar preparing a welcome.”

The aether transponder would allow other Legion ships to find us after we shifted, which meant I had to be long gone before they arrived. Getting around in the Aether without a navigator was difficult, but not impossible, and I knew a few places to hole up where Legion wouldn’t be able to find me.

“I’ll let them know to expect you,” Jayne shouted after me, but I was already halfway out of engineering.

The port hangar was up on deck 42, engineering was not, which meant freedom was just a short elevator ride away. Well, that and a stolen shuttle, a bit of good old fashioned pre-navigator Aether travel, and maybe some sold corporate secrets. There was still a little way for me to go, but Jayne was too much of a coward to stop me. So, the rest was really just a technicality.

Or so I thought until the elevator stopped between the 40th and 41st levels, and Jayne’s voice came in over the intercom.

“I’m sorry admiral, but you’re not going anywhere,” He said. His voice was wavering, and he didn’t sound all that confident considering the circumstances. “We’ll meet the other ship in the Aether, just like you said, and as per the captain's actual orders. But then you’ll be leaving in restraints, and turned over to Lord Garo for judgment.”

“Sorry boy,” I muttered. “That’s not how this is going down.” Being trapped in an elevator certainly wasn’t ideal, but if Jayne wanted me dead, then I’d already be dead. And since I wasn’t, I figured there was still a chance.

My talents were limited to necromancy, but I had never considered that to be much of a limit. Besides, I was still hopped up on an awful lot of stolen soul energy.

The air chilled around me as I called the spirits from the afterlife and invited them to empower my body. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d have such easy access to Lord Garo’s realm, but I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to continue to use it while I still could.

I felt us shift into the Aether mere moments later and acted immediately. Once Jayne realized he wouldn’t be able to contain me, he would kill me, and I needed to get outside of his sphere of influence before that. Which meant I needed to get off the ship.

I punched through the wall of the elevator and used the hole as a foothold to push myself up through the service hatch. Jayne was saying something over the intercom again, but I didn’t stop to listen. Instead, I tore the cable from the top of the elevator, causing it to drop me a few floors before engaging the emergency brakes.

A navigator had as much control over their ship as was possible, but they were far from omnipotent. Jayne wouldn’t be able to crush me with an elevator that no longer worked. The life support system was a different matter, but moving air around took time, and I wouldn’t be suffocating in this form. Not anytime soon.

I was five floors from the hangar, and climbing would take time that I didn’t have. Instead, I leapt at the far wall, and jumped off it to grab the bottom of the door on the 38th floor. There wasn’t much to grip, but I didn’t need much, and I repeated the trick four more times to reach the 42nd level.

The door was still closed, and I didn’t expect Jayne to be all that willing to open it for me. So, I opened it myself. Tearing the thin metal doors open with my bare hands made an awful racket, but it was effective.

I pulled myself up to the 42nd level and was surprised to see an empty hallway. It was just a quick jog between me and freedom. I could taste it.

That was until I saw that the doors that led to the hangar were sealed. They weren’t made of the same flimsy metal that was installed on the elevators, the hangar doors were well over a meter thick of dura-steel and locked tight. I could probably get through them in my current state, but it’d take a lot more time.

My body bulked up further as I called more spirits to my aid, and just before I started tearing my way to freedom, a translucent blue image appeared in front of me.

“I’m sorry, admiral, I wish there was another way,” the hologram of Jayne said. “But you’ve made it clear that you’re not willing to go quietly and after what you did… Well, Samira told me that this would happen. I just didn’t want to believe her, and neither did Captain Krisc.”

“I guess I had you fooled then,” I smirked. “What now, boy? You’re going to drain the atmosphere out of this hallway? Suffocate me to death? That’s not going to work while I’m super charged and I’ll break through to the hangar long before it wears off.”

“No, that’s not what I’m going to do.” Jayne shook his head slowly as he sighed. “I’ve emptied the atmosphere on the other side of this door and I’ve been slowly increasing the pressure in this hallway ever since you left the engineering level. The moment it opens you’ll be launched out the hangar, and through the shield into the Aether where you’ll drift until you die.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” I snarled at the transparent navigator. “What’s this performance about? Are you trying to teach me a lesson? Trying to keep me in here until you can sell me off to my death?”

“None of that.” Jayne balled his fists as he steeled his resolve, and I turned to run back to the open elevator shaft. “Krisc was my friend, and you killed her in the worst possible way. I hope you burn, you piece of shit.”

The air rushed past me as it lifted me off my feet and propelled me through the open doorway. I was moving fast, and the hangar passed in a blur. Before I knew it, I was drifting hundreds of meters from the ship in the inky purple haze of the Aether.

I held onto the spirits powering my body for as long as I could, but they eventually faded. After that, it only took 15 minutes of breathing aether for me to lose consciousness.

~~~~

My eyes shot open and I gasped as I sat up. I looked around to gather my bearings and recognized the interior of my personal shuttle. There was no possible way for me to be there, hells there was no possible way for me to still be alive. But from where I was sitting I could see a red blinking light on the shuttle's main console that indicated a recorded message.

So, I got up and I played it. Immediately I was able to recognize Bryce’s smug voice. “Hey, old man.” I could practically hear her smirk. “If you’re listening to this, then that means you survived. Congratulations, you may not be half as smart as you think you are, but you’re sure as the hells a tough son of a bitch.”

There was no way that I was going to listen to Bryce's victory lap sober. So, I hit the pause button and opened the hidden panel in the wall. After pouring myself a drink, I unpaused the recording.

“It wasn’t easy arranging this, but you’d be amazed at what you can do with an admiral’s access codes and a skilled pilot. You’re presumed dead right now, and at this point you have every reason to keep it that way.” Bryce paused for dramatic effect, and I took a sip from the glass as I waited for her to name the price.

“I’ve included a set of instructions in a file on this shuttle’s personal computer. If you’d like to stay ‘dead’ and make a little money while you’re at it, then I’d recommend following them.”

The message ended, and I was able to find the file easily enough. It started with a list of names and addresses which I recognized as belonging to high ranking EVI corp executives. The instructions that followed were very clear and so was the potential profit.

I finished my drink with a smirk and closed up my hidden bar. If this plan of Bryce's was going to work, then I'd need to find myself a new ship, and I knew just where to find one.