The interior of the shuttle was even more cramped than was normal for a Rosenberg-class, partly because the cockpit and cabin was separated by a thick security bulkhead hatch, and that the usual rows of upholstered seats had been replaced by metal benches that ran the length of the cabin. Twenty-four men and women dressed in drab grey overalls were seated on the benches; hand- and ankle cuffs magnetically bound to a rail below the bench seats, forcing the prisoners to sit in an uncomfortable bent forward position. Olbracht Krópka was still mentally dazed from what had transpired over the past few days. With what amounted to lightning speed by the standards of the Myndowan Imperial Courts, he had been tried and sentenced.

“All the evidence point in the direction of the accused,” the haughty Hungarian judge had proclaimed before the few in the courtroom, “and no sufficient arguments to dissuade me of his guilt have been presented by the accused, or his defence attorney. I hereby sentence Mr Krópka, for the murder of Zygmunt Dubinskas, to thirty-seven years of incarceration. Long live His Imperial Majesty.”

Stripped of rank, awards, entitlements and watching as his entire career was wiped out by the bang of a gavel and a few commands typed out on a keyboard, Olbracht was the very next day stuffed into this prison shuttle, headed for Elisabethmond and Correctional Centre No.1 Wysoki Zamek. To his left sat an older man with a wrinkled and dry face and calloused hands that betrayed his previous profession as some sort of physical labourer, whilst on his right sat a slender young man with a long neck, a freckled face and well-maintained blonde hair; the two couldn’t have been more different in outward appearance. As Olbracht was considering his fellow passengers, the older man caught his gaze and smiled a lopsided smile.

“So, dear sir,” he said in heavily Galician accented Ruthenian, “what is the cause of your enlistment to our humble company of ne’er-do-wells?”

“Innocence and miscarriage of justice by the Imperial Court,” Olbracht replied bitterly in his native Galician, desperately wanting to sit up and stretch his painfully throbbing back. The old man laughed hoarsely.

“Well ain’t that something novel, innocence getting you sent to the High Castle? For me, it’s the fifth, and by all accounts, my last time up there. Her honour-ship was very clear that I’ve up all my chances to become a functioning member of society.”

“Fifth time? What did you do?”

“E und V.”

“Come again?”

“Einbruch und Vergewaltigen. It was supposed to be just a simple break-in in a Lemberg manor, belonging to some cunt graf or something, but once inside and I stumbled upon that sweet little flower of a maid, oh I just had to taste her nectar…”

The convicted rapist had started to say something more, but he was cut off as a T-baton slammed down on his exposed neck and whatever he had tried to say was replaced by a surprised gurgle.

“Shut your yap, you sick fuck,” the prison guard snapped in German, and took up a position menacingly over the awkwardly positioned prisoner.

“No one wants to hear about your depravity, and unless you’re spoken to, prisoners will remain quiet while under transport.”

To emphasise his point, the guard kicked the old prisoner in the throat, the rapist producing shocked, choking sounds as his windpipe took a hefty blow, before another hard hit from the baton landed between his shoulder blades. Instinctively, the prisoner coiled his back in response to the blow, but the sudden jerking motion was arrested by the cuffs and instead he twitched in pain in his restraints, still heaving for air. Spittle dribbled from his open mouth onto the deck, pulled downwards by the shuttle’s grav plates. Olbracht was unsure if he wouldn’t have done the same to the inveterate burglar and violator had he been in the guard’s position.

“That’s what happens when you flaunt your crimes against society and Imperial laws,” the guard announced to the rest of the prisoners, most of whom hadn’t been able to see the old man get beat up, but the sounds were more than able to carry the message across.

“You are no longer people, you are evil-doers and prisoners, and do not have the same rights as you did as free citizens. You willingly threw those rights away when you chose to defy the Imperial justice system and piss on His Imperial Majesty’s laws, and you will do well to remember that from now on. This is just a taste of what punishment awaits you if you don’t comply, don’t listen, don’t behave.”

He was answered by whimpers and quiet sobbing from some of the prisoners, resentful silence from others. Olbracht had been stunned to silence. Was this the treatment the criminals he had brought to justice for the past twenty years had faced after he had dropped them off at the courts?

He was still contemplating this as the shuttle’s skids found a magnetic landing pad and the artificial gravity provided by the grav-plates was replaced by the natural one of a spinning celestial body. Not that it provided any sort of relief for Olbracht, because he knew they’d arrived at Elisabethmond. Correctional Centre No.1 Wysoki Zamek was infamous among the law enforcement of Lemberg, Kasjzerwald, Nay Rawa, and the other major cities of Tschornohora. Ostensibly a normal gaol, it was –secretly– managed by the Kaiserliche Myndowische Streitkräfte, more specifically the Kaiserliche Landgendarmerie, and as such didn’t conform to the same rules that the normal Myndowen police services adhered to. Just how different their practices were compared to the Imperial Prison Service was unknown by the members of the Polizei, and a topic of intense rumour-mongering and speculation. But that it was in fact different quickly became apparent as the prison guards from the shuttle were joined by other guards clad in black battle-armour suits. The magnetic rail keeping them pulled towards the floor was turned off, and a chorus of collective relief could be heard as they could for the first time in over three hours stretch their backs again. But relief was short-lived as the new guards, having signed off on a ‘pad for the transfer, started to shout at them in angry German to exit the ramp. Olbracht and the prisoners did as they were told, shuffling down and out of the Rosenberg pattern shuttle, magnetic boots clunking along the floor of the isolated landing pad to a massive magnetically-sealed blast door that separated the outside landing pads from the prison interior. The blast doors opened with a complaining metallic whine, the recently arrived group of prisoners being forced along by prods by the guards’ electronic stun-rods.

The inside was as impressive as it was foreboding. This part of the moon had been hollowed out to house a walled compound not unlike what you’d find on a planet-side prison, but the cell blocks were stacked on top of each other in the far walls of the main prison complex. Due to the slow spin of Elisabethmond, there was perhaps close to 0.5 G of effective gravity on the surface of the moon, but since it had a very low gravitational field strength, the interior (a mere two kilometres above Elisabethmond’s Mohorovičić boundary) had a slightly lower than that gravitational pull, meaning magnetic boots were required for normal, surface-like walking and running. Apart from this, Olbracht didn’t know a whole lot more about Wysoki Zamek, except that it had started up only six years ago, and no one had ever returned from being sentenced to serve their time there. Well, that figures, he thought bitterly, since no one with a sentence shorter than forty years were sent there, if the rumours are correct. Math checks out.

To more shouts of “Schnell, schnell!” and “Inline halten!” and the occasional whine-crack of stun-rods crackling with electromagnetic force, they were corralled towards a large gatehouse in the wall of the prison. Calling it a “prison” was almost a disservice; it could easily have been mistaken for a redoubt or fortress given its fifteen-metre tall crenelated walls and outwards-jutting towers that provided overlapping fields of fire for the no doubt fearsome weapon systems hidden within. Nothing about this sort of defensive arrangements, the gendarmes dressed in black battlesuits complete with plate carriers, face-shielded helmets with tight-sealed gorgets and pulse-weapons ideal for close-to-zero-gee combat, and the eerie Spartan military atmosphere, inspired Olbracht with any great hope for what lay ahead of him. He kept running the lines of the song Natalia had told him to remember, over and over again; partly so he wouldn’t forget, partly to keep his mind from imagining what lay on the inside of those menacing walls.

“Bring out the horses and put on the saddles,

And sharpen arrow heads and swords.

Because I was told in Vilnius, that they will bran without mistake,

Three expeditions to three parts of the world:

Algirdas to the Rus settlements, Skirgaila to the Polish neighbours,

Whilst prince Keystutis will raid the Teutons.”

Through the gatehouse port they entered, under the watchful eyes of four-legged warwalkers the size of large horses, armed with chainguns. They were frightful machine-mind drone war machines, and though thankfully slaved to a human operator’s command helmet rig, they were still harrowing to look at. One of the walkers suddenly jerked its dual-turret to look at one of the prisoners and she whimpered and made herself look small. Nearby guards laughed, and one high-fived the operator, his grin visible under his bulbous, bug-eye operator helmet. The inner part of the gatehouse hosted an ident-and-confirm sluice system, with manned desks hidden behind bulletproof carbonglass, and the prisoners were lined up in front of these. Apparently there was more than one intake happening today, and three other lines were formed to the left of Olbracht’s.

Funny, he thought to himself, that’s an awful lot of prisoners coming in at once; assuming they arrived on a similar shuttle, that means there’s an intake of over a hundred at the same time. Tschornohora is a large place, but a hundred new prisoners to a maximum security military prison in a single day-big? Something’s off here.

His line of thought was interrupted as it suddenly was his turn to be sluiced in. A stocky woman dressed in the black and purple fatigue dress of the Landgendarmerie with the collar rank insignia of a silver crown and silver Lithuanian knight –a leitenantas­–, sat on the opposite of the glass and looked at Olbrahct with uncaring eyes. Olbracht blinked a few times as he processed the meaning of the insignia, and his blood started slowly to boil.

Lithuanians, fucking cockroaches. Not content with crawling all over the imperial hierarchy, are they? Not only have they become the politically correct people to promote and put in leadership positions after His Majesty married one of their upierdliwy kind, now one of them is going to lock me up and chuck away the keys?

It took a surprising amount of personal discipline for Olbracht to keep those thoughts from leaving his mouth, but the leitenantas simply looked at him, apparently waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked. She looked him up and down, frowned a bit and finally vocalised the question she no doubt asked scores of time per day.

“Name und Vorname?”

Olbracht clicked his tongue, but answered regardless.

“Krópka, Olbracht.”

The gendarme scrolled down on her grav-mounted computer, and typed it in.

“Personnummer?”

A small, bitter smile.

“Dwa-trzy-zero-osiem-dwa-osiem-trzy-trzy-cztery-sześć-jedno-jedno, cwaj.”

She made an irritated grimace.

“Was? Give me your fucking personal social number in Imperial German now, you’re just prolonging this process unnecessarily.”

“Dwa-trzy-zero-osiem…”

“Guards, we have a jokester here. Take him away and show him what we think about funny ha-ha people in Wysoki Zamek.”

Olbracht smiled nastily at the officer, the miniscule act of rebellion against the injustice of it all lighting a fire within him that did not measure up to scale compared to his little show of defiance. The fire was replaced by pain as one of the nearby guards came over and hit him with a closed fist right in the stomach, knocking the air out of him. Falling to his knees gasping for air, Olbracht didn’t have time to brace himself before the guard’s stun-rob came flying right at his head, about level with his temple. The world became a blurry haze of incredible pain, tears, and electro-magnetic whining and Olbracht could feel the contents of his stomach trying to escape the only way it could. But there was nothing in his stomach, and he very painfully –both from the retching itself and from the blow he’d just taken to his stomach– dry-heaved onto the metal deck.

“Take him to the back,” he could vaguely hear one of the gendarmes say over the whining sound in his head, “and let the Major have a word with him. He probably won’t cause any more trouble after that.”

Strong arms were cupped under Olbracht’s armpits and he was violently hauled to his feet, and dragged off somewhere, his feet scraping across the deck, the magnetic soles making the job just that more laborious for the guards doing the dragging, which suited Olbracht just fine. He could hear a door swish open and he was more or less thrown down to sit in a metal chair so uncomfortable it was probably designed that way on purpose. Olbracht sat there for a few moments, coughing and trying to regain a normal rhythm of breathing, waiting for the whining in his ears to subside at least somewhat. He looked down on his coverall legs and saw several spatters of blood, and slowly brought his still-shackled hands up to his face, trying to ascertain the level of damage. As his fingers gingerly worked their way to his right temple he hissed in sharp, abrupt pain and his fingertips came away bloody. His right eye was also slowly losing vision, meaning it was swelling.

Wonderful, if I came out of that with just a concussion and internal bruising, some Goddess up there is probably looking out for me.

He realised with a pang he was not alone in the room, and he straightened up quickly as he laid eyes on the only other person present. The room was completely bare, carboncrete walls with a metal table in the centre and one more of those abominable chairs. A classic interrogation room, the likes of which Olbracht had spent countless hours in over the course of his early twenty-year career, although he was usually the one in the position of the other person, not sitting down all bruised and beaten.

“Herr Krópka, what a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

The man looked like he was in his mid- to early thirties, but that estimate could be off by several decades considering what modern medical treatments were capable of in terms of arresting the aging process. He was tall and thin, wearing a much more elaborate version of the black and purple gendarmerie uniform, with silver threads and frogging, as well as a gilded tin crescent-gorget with Kaiserliche Landgendarmerie written in chiselled gothic font on it. His black hair was slicked back and well-maintained, as was his clean-shaven, angular face. The officer’s epaulettes showed a crowned silver embroidered star within a black field surrounded by a silver-threaded galloon braid, and a silver two-headed eagle grasping a shield on his collar. He also wore high black riding boots, polished so they shone in the irritatingly bright glare from the embedded lights in the ceiling.

Major, German noble, shit.

The major was sitting nonchalantly on the metal table, slowly scrolling on a datapad, his white gloves left on the table, along with his sheathed uniform sword, but his wide white and purple sash-belt protruded slightly on the left side, just ahead of the knot that held it in place, which suggested to Olbracht that the good major had elected to keep his firearm on him.

“Ah, but where are my manners?” the major suddenly exclaimed in a jovial tone that didn’t fool Olbracht for a single moment.

“My name is Freiherr Ulrich Maria von Annaberg, Edler-Major in His most august Imperial Highness’ Landgendarmerie.” His Galician was bordering on completely fluent, with a hint of an urban Wallachian accent to it.

“Delighted, I’m sure,” Olbracht replied flatly, his defiance not entirely punched out of him, but the Major simply gave him a slightly condescending smile.

“Mr Krópka, no need to take that tone with me, I am here with an angebot you might want to mull over a bit before you blurt out what I imagine your reflexive answer to be. You see, policemen who end up in jail, especially high security ones like Zamek, rarely see their sentence fully carried out, if you catch my drift.”

The Major tapped the ‘pad for emphasis, despite Olbracht not being able to see what was displayed on it.

“And for the record, despite the fact that there isn’t a record…” van Annaberg chuckled a bit at his own blasé quip before sobering up and putting his white gloves back onto his long fingers and unblemished hands.

“I believe that you have been the victim of some very cruel circumstances, possibly bordering on a conspiracy. Just look at the evidence; your firearm suddenly in the murder victim’s apartment, the fact that he was an acquaintance of you, and the Light Way speed of the judicial process leading to your sentencing. My dear Krópka, you have been set up.”

Olbracht opened his mouth, but no words came out. Out of all the people who had shown him even an inkling of sympathy over this whole sordid affair (apart from Natalie), he’d never imagined it would be a noble officer in the infamous Landgendarmerie.

“So, will you believe me when I say I am here with an offer that will help you?”

“If you’ll excuse me Herr Major,” Olbracht replied, carefully choosing his words, “but I feel like I don’t have many options but to say I tentatively believe you.”

Von Annaberg smiled, rose from his seat on the metal table and started to slowly pace the room, staying within Olbracht’s field of vision at all times. Smart, he’s building trust on a metaphysical level; slow, elaborate, and telegraphed movement.

“As I was saying, once your fellow inmates realises you’re a senior policeman... Well done by the way, making Chefinspektor at forty-two, and as a Galician-Ruthenian to boot, most impressive. And that paints a further target on your back, so unless you want to be looking over your shoulder every second, I believe you’d do wisely listening to what I have to offer.”

“Mein Herr, may I be permitted to ask two questions?”

The major frowned for a moment, revealing he was not used to being interrupted, but he nodded his assent nonetheless.

“First, what is this place? Why is Zamek under the surface of Elisabethmond, and why is it run by the gendarmes?”

“A fair question, given the circumstances; as a policeman it would only be natural of you to ask. It is a maximum-security Arbeitslager for prisoners who are deemed, ah, sufficiently hazardous or rebellious that they would pose a threat if placed in gaols close to civilian population centres. Next question.”

“Sir, why are you approaching me? Is this a discussion you have with anyone who resists identification and registration?”

Von Annaberg chuckled a bit before answering.

“Alas, no, dear Chefinspektor, this is a privilege I only extend to those I believe to be capax servii to His Majesty’s best interests, and by extension therefore their own.”

Olbracht must have looked like a question mark in human form, because von Annaberg stopped his pacing, sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest.

“I’ll speak in plain terms. You’re fucked if you are sluiced into the prison without any sort of help from the guards and the higher-ups, which in this case means me and my people here on Elisabethmond. This is an Arbeitslager, Mr Krópka, prisoners here are sentenced to hard labour, human muscle used to strip-mine this moon for titanium and chromium, metal used to feed the orbital foundries which is the turned into more warships for the Kaiserliche Marine. I don’t know if you’d paid attention to interstellar news, Mr Krópka, but there’s a galactic arms race going on, and if Myndowen is to stand even a slight chance maintaining her Great Power status in the coming decade, she will need many more warships and much larger warships. Undesirables to society can still help the Imperial cause, which is why this lager exists.”

Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place for Olbracht.

“You want me to be an informant? I jostle and bust my ass alongside the other inmates and report any misgivings to you?”

Von Annaberg smiled that enigmatic smile of his again.

“You’re catching on, Mr Krópka, but you’re a little off the mark still. Yes, I’d like you to use your detective-trained eyes and ears after you’re sluiced in, but I want you to be on the lookout for something a bit more specific than just complaints about the canteen slop, or isolation ward conditions.

Certain elements among the inmate body are not… your typical criminals sentenced to an Arbeitslager, I suppose you could call them. But they are definitively threats to the Empire, and the Nachrichdienst have triangulated signals coming from this very prison being transmitted to the surface of Myndowen. We’ve tried to find the equipment and those using it, but so far our efforts have been frustratingly fruitless. So, we need someone to sniff them out for us, someone who knows what they’re doing, a professional.”

“Me.”

“You, Mr Krópka. Obviously the Landsgendarmerie is an honourable institution, and of course you wouldn’t be taking on such massive personal risk without the expectation of some sort of reward.”

“Naturally,” Olbracht said sarcastically, but the subtext was apparently lost on von Annaberg.

“The guards will always have your back if you get into any sort of scuffle with the inmates. You must of course expect a glancing blow from a stun-rod or a fist now and then; we can’t be seen to play obvious favourites, you of course understand this, yes? Furthermore, I will personally see to it that your sentence will be scheduled for a re-trial once you find these troublesome cockroaches for us, and I think you might find that the judge and jury will be more positively disposed towards your plight this next time around.”

Olbracht chewed on his lower lip as his mind raced.

“Can I have some time to think this over? Not that it’s a bad offer, quite the opposite Mein Herr, it’s just that I’m still kind of dazed and need to give what you’re saying proper evaluation.”

The noble major grimaced in annoyance, and picked up his sheathed sword from the table and began strapping it back onto his sash-belt.

“In any other circumstance, I would have thrown you right out into the courtyard and have you flogged for such ingratitude, Mr Krópka,” von Annaberg replied with a nasty sneer.

“But I am feeling charitable today, and you have a special skill set that does not come along every day in this place, so I will allow you time until tomorrow morning at roll call to make your mind up. Just be aware that I can make your stay here a purgatory unlike anything you can imagine if you end up taking me for a fool, or get in my way.”

Olbracht knew he had stepped half a foot over the cliff’s edge and bowed his head.

“Thank you for your generosity, Mein Herr, and I will have an answer for you by tomorrow. One last thing, Herr Major, what association do you make of the name Keystutis?”

“Hmm?” Major von Annaberg cocked his head slightly, his face still looking like he wanted nothing more than to kick Olbracht in the jaw, before snapping his fingers twice. The door behind Olbracht opened with a swish, and two gendarmes came up on either side of him.

“Some old Eastern European warlord, was he not? Polish or Curonian or some such? What has that got to do with anything?”

“My apologies,” Olbracht replied quickly, realising he was in dangerous waters, “I thought the von Annabergs may be related to the Teutonic noble families of old Samogitia, my mistake.”

Ulrich von Annaberg sneered again.

“As if my noble line has been tainted with filthy Lithuanian blood, the mere implication is enough to make me sick. Take him to extradited registration.”

“Hey, I can walk on my own just f–” Olbracht did not get to finish the sentence before the strong hands of the gendarmes lifted him to his feet and dragged him back through the door.

The next hour passed by in almost a blur, as Olbracht was brought to an office where a different gendarme officer filled him into the prison registry. He didn’t try the same stunt of replying in Galician this time around, meekly rifling off his personal social number in German, as well as the other usual questions.

“Ihre Körpergröße?”

“Einhundert und Einundsiebzig.”

“Familienstand?”

“Ledig.”

It carried on for another few minutes, Olbracht answering absentmindedly, mind occupied with the conversation he had had with von Annaberg, and the cryptic message he was supposed to deliver to this “Orsza”.

“Gut, alles ist in Ordnung. Wachen?”

Olbracht didn’t wait for the guards to yank him up from the office chair this time around, and resolutely looked the taller of the two in the eye as he walked past them and out the door. Wordlessly, with one in front and one behind, the gendarmes led him out of the administrative brick building (which looked weirdly out of place, designed in a Southern Germanic Landshut-style, which along with the guard barracks, contrasted sharply with the brutalist-esque design of the rest of the prison-fortress), and into the courtyard. With the cellblocks built into the side of the hollowed-out moon, Olbracht felt he was being watched from every single one of the small cell windows. In the centre of the courtyard was a tall and wide tower, with cloche-bunkers jutting out in all eight intercardinal directions about midway up, while the top obviously housed some sort of control station where long corridors led to cell blocks in six directions, and to the crenelated walls in the remaining two. Olbracht was led into the tower, and shoved into a central elevator guarded by no less than twelve warwalkers and their three human operators, plus a further squad of ten gendarmes armed with flechette-guns. The trip up to the control centre at the top was undertaken in pressing silence. The top of the tower was dominated by a central room that had a commanding and clear view of all the passageways, though “room” was a bit of a misnomer, Olbracht concluded; “bunker” might be a better term for the heavily fortified structure, with another squad of gendarmes behind carboncrete and carbonglass. Then it was another trip down one of the passageways leading to the cell blocks, and into the block itself. The inside looked like any other gaol on Myndowen, and Olbracht surprised himself by feeling a bit of relief that at least some things were recognisable. The block was organised in several levels of cells turned towards an inner combined courtyard/canteen area.

As they walked up the stairs to the fourth and top level of the cell blocks, a massive shadow fell on them from the top of the stairs.

“Move your fat arse, Ursus,” one of the guards growled, his hand slowly but pointedly finding the pommel of his sheathed stun-rod, “or I’ll move it for you.”

The large man apparently named Ursus simply chuckled and stepped back up the stairs and stood aside. He was thickset, but not pudgy, Olbracht noticed, and he was bald on his head but had a huge brown-and-silver beard that reached his chest.

“No need for that Herr Linde, I was just headed for the showers on level two, I’m awake enough that I don’t need a little buzz from your zap-stick there.”

Something clicked in Olbracht’s brain.

“Uh, might I also have a shower after you’ve shown me the cell?”

The gendarme named Linde scowled at Olbracht, but after a tense moment he nodded. Olbracht was shown to his cell, which in all honesty wasn’t as bad as he had feared. He had a mattress (lying directly on the carboncrete floor), a desk, a swivel-chair, two cupboards, and a toilet in the corner. He assumed Zamek worked with the same privilege points the rest of the Myndowen prison system did; be good enough of a boy and you could earn points for good behaviour which could be exchanged for luxuries. That, or simply bribe the guards. It was a public secret that employees in His Imperial Majesty’s Prison Service were corrupt as hell, and Olbracht didn’t think the Landgendarmerie salary was that much higher than a normal prison guard’s.

True to his word, Linde took Olbrahct to the prison cell’s shower block. It shamed even the worst of locker rooms of communal football halls Olbrahct had been in as a child, but he was actually pleasantly surprised there was no mould on the walls. I’ve been here for an hour and I’m already settling down? Kurwa! After a short while, he had deposited his clothes in the wardrobe and entered the shower, a male guard keeping an eye on everyone present by the open doorway, as if those who ran the prison didn’t trust their omnipresent drones and watch-cams. As Olbracht let the warm water wash over him, he could hear a somewhat familiar ditsy being sung from a few stalls away from him.

“Old Budrys and three sons, as stout as Lithuania herself,

To the courtyard he calls and says:

“Bring out the horses and put on the saddles,

And sharpen arrow heads and swords.”

Olbracht finished showering rather quickly (but not before letting the water proverbially wash away much of the stress of these few days), making sure to be ready –despite being clad in nature’s own outfit– as soon as the probable contact exited the showers. He needn’t have bothered.

“You’re Nat’s little one, aren’t you?” The large man with the surname of Ursus grinned at him, still completely undressed.

“I, uh, wha-?” Olbracht managed to produce, completely caught off-guard, as the two men were standing in plain sight in the shower block, a guard actually present; but his apparently new best mate Ursus didn’t seem to care. His newly minted oppo grinned fiercely instead.

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll introduce you to a new set of very good friends shortly.”

“I was supposed to recognise you through your choice of song whilst showering…”

Ursus, now that Olbracht knew better, the person with the codename “Orsaz”, grinned widely.

“She taught you well, but she didn’t tell you the rest of the dance you’re supposed to carry out. Just follow my lead, little sparrow.”

The last sentence was accompanied by a smile and a wink from the bearded giant, and Ursus walked past him into the wardrobe section of the showers, and hummed the same tune to himself rather loudly. Olbracht felt he had no choice but to follow suit, sans the humming. Once the two were dressed back into their dull grey overalls, Ursus fixed his rather penetrating dark brown eyes on the guard monitoring the shower block exit.

“Ah, Mr Weiss,” his baritone voice droned, “I’ve been the sad recipient of the information that my friend here, Mr…?”

Olbracht didn’t need that much of a lead before catching on.

“Olbracht-230828334611,” he rattled off in rapid-fire German and Ursas grinned.

“Just so, my friend Mr Olbracht hasn’t been allowed to make his ‘call’ yet.”

Call? What cwaj call? Olbracht didn’t remember any of the prison officers mentioning a call, but he decided to go along. The guard apparently named Weiss simply nodded his understanding and beckoned for the duo to follow him. They went up two stairs, but stopped before reaching their shared prison cell floor, but were wordlessly ushered into a nondescript cell which had no name plaque on its door. Weiss was looking stern and intimidating the entire time, but Ursus walked into the small cell without a comment and Olbracht had no option but to follow. Once inside what was obviously an isolation-cell, and as soon as Olbracht’s eyes were able to adjust to the darkness, he could see a webcom set-up in the far corner of the bare carboncrete cell.

“Is that…?”

“Shush now, little one,” Orsaz said back at him with a wide smile.

“Just pick up the receiver and talk to my good friend on the other end.”

Olbracht did what he was told and picked up the old-fashioned wired headset and put over his ears and adjusted the mike. Ursus fiddled with a few knobs and pressed a sequence of numbers into the key-register of the set, before getting up off his knees and walked back to the closed cell door. He rapped it a few times before the cell-door opened whilst a peeping calling sound universal to all human cultures in the Post-Exodus Era suddenly filled his ears.

“How much time?” he asked in a low tone that seemed very strange for such a large man.

“About six minutes I would think,” Weiss the gendarme on the other side of the door replied, “so you better make it rather snappy.”

Olbracht had been about to pipe up about whom they were calling and why there was a time-limit, but the calling in progress sound in his ears were abruptly interrupted by loud silence and then replaced by a male voice talking in English:

“This has better be good, Ursus, or I swear to the Gods we’ll short the funding to your little inside operation. Gods knows we already give more than enough for bribes and illicit…”

“Who am I talking to?” Olbracht said in his Galician-tinged English accent, and he could hear the voice on the other end take a sharp breath.

“Mr Kròpka, I would assume?” the voice said in painfully enunciated Galician, but said grammatically correct, which was impressive in of itself, “how nice to hear from you. Just so you know, there are a lot of us who are desperately eager to hear what you have to say from inside Elisabetmond.”

“You still haven’t answered me,” Olbracht Kròpka tried again, this time in halting English.

“Oh, not to fear, Mr Kròpka,” the voice answered, “we only have your best intentions at heart. But before we can help you escape the torment of your present situation, you will need to help up first.”

A short four minutes later, after the corrupt guard at the door had given Ursus a signal to cover the comms-device and act the customary downtrodden and desperate, the two prisoners were led back to their cells. About four-hundred and three-thousand kilometres away, on the planetary surface of Tschornohora, Post-captain Raphael Barham grinned as he put the receiver down.

“I would,” he asked out loud to his secretary who he was certain was still in his office, “like a trip back to Aurora via the first available liner come next week.” His grin grew wider.

“I feel like I will soon have my hands on some very juicy stuff that Fifth Lady Admiral Bower-Henton would appreciate. It go a long way to also ennoble our attempts to come to grips with what the Kaiser is doing, even despite the falsification of murder evidence and usage of SAI to convince courts.”

He rose from his chair and adjusted his black and gold tunic, before putting the white and black gilded cap back on his head.

“If you don’t mind,” he said with his head half-way turned toward his secretary in the corner of his Lemberg Embassy, “could you be so kind as to write up a copy of this and send it as a ‘thank you’-note to our inexhaustible allies in the Holy Kingdom of Dionysia?”

He didn’t wait for a response from the Royal Navy sub-lieutenant assigned to him from the Admiralty’s Department of Intelligence, but what he did not know was that she had already recorded all the same data he sat on.

“Oh my,” Ilearch Molon said as the paper-print appeared in front of him, a few days later, given the travel-time between stars.

“I feel like we have underestimated the Aurorans. Is that something you would be able to address?”

The short, female-presenting person in Molon’s comms-feed nodded. There was a sudden whiff of wind which sent their white hair wafting.

“I will do my best.”

Molon smiled lopsidedly.

“I would expect nothing less from you."