An iceberg-sized section of structured control flow deconstructed and broke away from the greater architecture of the macro-routine, falling into a matrical subspatial hole that reverberated with the fragment's passing, sending ripples along the larger framework that left wide crevices and cracks that bled Reality.

The Walls were coming down...

The unexpected ferocity of the assault was dangerously close to overcoming their defenses. At the rate of disassembly he was observing, it wouldn't be much longer before the Faction was breached.

Monsters from the Paranescience. Cyborg terrorists, bio-deviants, artificially created mutants, malformed teratogenic aberrations, cross-space alien gene-trash... Homicidal beasts with the power of dwarf stars. The giant seated in the flying Phasis Throne had long ago counseled his more senior, noble kindred that the chaotic Paranescience and its ruler would eventually become an unmanageable thorn in the side of Cosmic Order, but they had decided -- wrongly -- that his warnings and protestations were products of alarmist paranoia. Damn them, damn all of them.

Tegryimm Xolak engaged in a brief series of mental calculations, barely noticed the looping elliptical orbits of the other six Phasis Thrones as they followed their preset intersequenced paths throughout the Antidifferential Polyhedrum's spatial interior. The mathematical exercises kept him calm, helped him maintain mental clarity without disengaging him from the situation at hand. The composite interior of the Antidifferential Polyhedrum, a compact, non-orientable planar immersion arranged as an interlocked set of chambers enclosed in a pocket of unstable Null-Space, was the heart of the Authoritarch's Prismatic Faction. Xolak, the Paladin Prime of the Authoritarchs, leader of the Sentry Protective, was agitatedly killing time as he waited for his Authoritarch brethren, a contentious and fractured group of ancient parahuman intellects, to come to a decision about how to best handle the Black Sun Seraph named Kahlyndaar's relentless physical onslaught.

There hadn't been any kind of open rebellion against the Celestial Syndicate of Multiversity in over nine hundred solar orbital heliars. Not since the armies of the upstart Usurper, Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh, also known as "The World-Father" from the planet Teshiwahur, had invaded the Metaflow from a breach they'd created in the Shroud Gates, the Obscuratotem, which was hidden inside the turbulent, macro-radioactive storm called the "Makkaryenne Elasticity". The World-Father and the forces of the Hegemonic Emperium had been forcibly repelled, sent back to their dirty and primitive Einsteinian universe, and Draggyn Han'Khainus-Galorketh had been cruelly punished for his arrogance, his fleshly humanity stripped away for all time. But at that time, the Authoritarchs had taken the matter of their dominance and security quite seriously. In the generations since, they'd become complacent, lax content to let the Prime Paladin handle things on his own while they pursued loftier endeavors. Xolak had seen the power and influence of the Paranescience grow, he knew what Infernyya Rebekkon could do, knew that of which she was capable. He warned them. Yet nothing came of it. Now, Kahlyndaar was pummeling his way into their Holy of Holies, their innermost Sanctum of Power. The sovereignty of the Authoritarchs was clearly in danger of being demolished.

And Tegryimm Xolak was left sitting in anticipation, waiting for the other Authoritarchs, primarily Morgefane, Phraktycine and Heurassent, but especially Wenshalla Hax, to finish their audience with an Outworld-Otherverse creature identifying itself as The Vanguard of the Void Gods, a "Principal Diplomatic Liaison", from the direful Mokaeren Host.

The Outsider called itself "Encydiunathe" and it was of an aristocratic blood-lineage belonging to the Mokaeren demigod called "Quhr", the Void God's dreaded Invoker of Judgment.

"The Beasts have awakened, hungry to take your power from you. Despite all you've done for them, despite the sacrifices you've made to protect them from the wildness and fury of the Metaflow Itself, even from their own violent natures, they champ at the bit, they plot behind your back, they sneer at any mention of your names, and instead of showing you gratitude, they snarl in your face. They are beasts and it is in their nature. They will rebel against you. Change, the ONLY constant in all the many universes, is coming. It comes whether you are ready or not. Listen, you can hear it. Out there, hammering at the walls of your highest, most sacred sanctuary," Encydiunathe said from the podium at which he stood near the Compass of Multiversal Eminence. The Multiversal Compass was the heart of the quantum-web whereby the Authoritarchs could map and mark their amalgamated territories. The Vanguard of the Void Gods, "Void Gods" being the term the Mokaeren Host had adopted when commonly referring to themselves, spoke with the smoothly assured oratory skills of a hyper-competent diplomat. "It is the sound of evolution run amok, of transformative progress and expansion in the claws and fists of mammalian human rabble, too blinded by their animal appetites and their mortality to know what it is they are wrestling to tear down. The Host have weathered such change, in times past, and we have learned to shape it and redirect it so that it is WE who control it and not the reverse. In the spirit of equanimity and rapprochement, we offer you the benefits of our knowledge."

"At what price?" Wenshalla Hax, the August Presence and leader of the Authoritarchs, queried.

Encydiunathe made a small shrug and spread his taloned hands expansively. "All we ask for, is free and open access to the Outer Rim of the Far Frontier beyond the Rift Bridge, to the forsaken area once called 'Kadaverign-Space' where the Arkyngales of Jaometron once lived and flourished."

Tegryimm Xolak's huge fists clenched reflexively in sudden apprehension. Kadaverign-Space. By All of Fate's Demented Devils, would the Authoritarch's Prismatic Faction never be free of the sins lurking there?

The lead Authoritarch sat pensively for a long and fragile moment, eyes closed in thought, before, in a soft voice that was all saw-toothed edges, he finally said, "Am I to believe that you consider us such fools as to feel it reasonable that we would consider such a request at face value, that we possess no knowledge of the historical tapestry of corruption, subterfuge and dishonesty behind the motivations of deals and treaties offered by the Mokaeren Host? You would be that openly insulting to us?"

Encydiunathe's three eyes blinked rapidly, his facial features going momentarily slack with surprise as Wenshalla Hax's response caught him unawares.

"This is not some backwater tribal territory and we of the Prismatic Faction are not a collection of crude, unsophisticated shamans forecasting prophesies from casting animal bones and the reading of entrails," Hax continued through clenched teeth. "And you, messenger of the Mokaerens, are not some refined dilettante academic. The Mokaeren Host are an assembly of rabid pack animals, an assemblage of greedy, warmongering despots -- so if they sent such as YOU out into the Void to make treaties, then we can be certain those treaties are worthless. Your crimes committed while in service to your grim lords are known to us. You are a sadist and a mass murderer. And the only reason you are still alive to spread your lies is because the Prismatic Faction, we who are the Celestial Syndicate of Multiversity, needed to discover whether or not it was you and your masters who, through your meddling and scheming, misguidedly brought the Black Sun Seraph named Kahlyndaar to our gates."

Encydiunathe raised an open hand as well as his voice to offer false protestations.

"The current state of affairs is not so linear nor as obvious as all that...," he began, quickly losing his initial surprised stammer.

"We do not care," Hax said dismissively. "We are aware that your lord and master, Quhr, was once held captive by those exo-evolutionary xenomorphs renowned as the Xherim'efarr to perform penitence for his criminal acts. Well, you should be aware that the HyperLords are allies of the Authoritarchs. And we will not be engaging in ANY variety of pact or convenant with him or any others of his kind. This is not open for further discussion. So, if you value your continued existence, you should leave NOW while we are of a mind to continue honoring your questionable 'diplomatic' status."

Encydiunathe stared hot daggers at Wenshalla Hax and moved his searing gaze across the others in the clique of powerful beings inhabiting the Antidifferential Polyhedrum's vast interior, his demeanor changed, his mask of civility dropping away.

"So I would have to imagine you have contingency measures through which you will deal harshly with Kahlyndaar and any other unauthorized threats originating from Queen Rebekkon's Paranescience, knowing she did not approve such measures against you. That matters little, though," Encydiunathe said. "You would have done better to make a deal with the Host than to openly challenge the vengeful Arkyngale ruling over Hellmarrow. Good day to you, you August Leaders of unsuspecting sheep, the ghosts of Kadaverign-Space will not relent until you have been bled and bled well."

After his unceremonious exit, a furious Wenshalla Hax tossed a glare over towards Tegryimm Xolak and said, "This lunacy has gone far enough. Kill the abomination outside this sanctum and marshal a punitive action force to dispatch to Infernyya Rebekkon's domain in the Conjoined Planescape of the Banborough Aggregation. Take its lifeless body with you and lay it at her doorstep to remind her who were are... and what it is we can and will do."

Even as the sanctum of the Prismatic Faction reverberated and trembled under Kahlyndaar's assault, Xolak, the Paladin Prime of the Authoritarchs, leader of the Sentry Protective, bowed deeply while he exiting the chamber.

The Walls were, indeed, coming down...

                                                                                      * * *

Something hot whizzed by her head so fast that its passing left a searing slipstream in its passing, like the barbed bullwhip of a cat o'nine tails ... were it made from lightning. The snap of the damned thing created a percussive explosion that threatened to blow out her eardrums as its electrical discharge punched a cannonball-sized hole in the wall against which she stood. Masonry splinters and brick dust spewed out in a wide cloud as she staggered, ducking under the blast. She could taste the particulate cascade, like burnt stone, blossoming away from the blast. Executing that movement sent a knife-edged pulse of agony along her right side, where the wound from an attacking Manifold Predator's talons had left a trio of deep scars along her rib cage. Her response, fueled by pain and growing anger, was an upward thrust from her own weapon, a saw-toothed edged katana through which ran a deadly radioenergetic surge, and a quick series of slashes that eviscerated her looming opponent, the Predator's suddenly exposed internal organs erupting out from his torso to plop wetly onto the street. She managed to rapidly dodge to one side to avoid being pinned down by the dying beast's falling bulk.

Ryujonin Worr was not having a good day.

She and the giant Black Sun Seraph, Opthas Kandyruu, had fought past nearly three dozen attacking Manifold Predators, the wailing and roaring beasts rushing at them from three different directions as they battled deeper into Lobarth Ceryndum's multi-leveled main city center.

Kandyruu's thick arms were at full extension, one pointing down directly in front of him and the other at ninety degrees, outstretched at shoulder's height, pointing off to his right side. The multi-barreled, rotary ballistic cannon morphed from the cybernetic machinery of his forearm loosed a hundred round volley of high velocity matter-reactive particle bursts into a charging mob of assailants. Flesh shredded and flew off from the Predators' bodies, their skin catching flame, as Kandyruu mercilessly raked their ranks with a torrent of lethal firepower.

"They keep coming! How is that possible? How can there be so many of them? It's a thrice-damned horde! By the Unholiness of the Blind Zealot, how long are we going to keep this up?" Ryujonin irritably demanded of her comrade in bloodletting.

"My heuristic targeting-nav mapping says that we're almost at the direct center of this sectional pod of the city," Kandyruu snarled, "This has immediate strategic value. Once there I'll be able to deal with these annoying vermin much more efficiently."

"Oh well, then, as long as it has 'immediate strategic value'..., why should I worry, right?" the cosmic ronin remarked bitterly through a panting breath.

"Righteous combat is not a time for whining and grumbling! Don't be rude, flesh-bag, we are together in this, whether we like it or not."

"Righteous combat? What in the Nine Putrified Hells do you mean by that? You think this is some kind of Holy War? And did you just call me 'flesh-bag', you armored mutant freak?"

"Still your tongue, you unenlightened barbarian, we have engaged the swarming, degenerate rabble of a diseased lunatic in the name of the Queen of the Paranescience...!" Kandyruu roared as his weaponry strafed yet another oncoming group of rapacious attackers.

"I am NO 'barbarian' and she's NOT my Queen," Ryujonin barked angrily.

"We're in position," Kandyruu blurted, "Get closer to me and get down! Stay down until I tell you otherwise!"

And without waiting for even a moment more, the Black Sun Seraph sometimes called 'the Killer of Gods' arrested his forward momentum, jerked his body into a ramrod straight posture, and folded his thick arms across his armored chest. The female intergalactic samurai dropped to her knees as intersecting and overlapping plates on Kandyruu's swiftly shifted and moved into a new matrix, his armor morphing into a variant version of its normal appearance, and a series of reddish-orange lights running on the outer contours of his towering body winked brightly on...

An intricate expanding web composed of brilliant rays of coherent light emitted from Kandyruu's carapace armor --- and just that suddenly everything, organic or inorganic, steel flesh or stone, beyond arm's reach surrounding him explosively disintegrated. The broadening laser web cut through buildings and Manifold Predators alike, its intensity magnifying as it emanated away from its central origin point, and, even as the Manifold Predators screeched and screamed, some of the cityscape around the pair began collapsing, only to have even that debris fall into the sizzling web and vaporize.

The web extended yet further and then tendrils of searing light broke away from the master matrix and struck out independently, lancing down side streets and avenues like hunting hounds tracking and chasing prey for their huntsman master. Whatever they touched, they destroyed.

It was a horrifyingly efficient demonstration of the Black Sun Seraph's capacity for unleashing destruction on a grand scale.

The silence that followed was nerve-shredding as fingernails dragged across a slate blackboard.

The beams of light comprising the web winked out of existence and it took a moment for Ryujonin's eyes to adapt past the residual glare.

"You may stand up now," the bulky warrior-assassin intoned. He looked down on Ryujonin and the eyes peering out from his helmet's faceplate were cold and condemnatory. It was the judgmental stare of an executioner.

Refusing to be cowed or intimidated by him, the cosmic ronin glared up at Kandyruu in return, managing to comment in a steady voice, "Right, so you couldn't simply have led with that?"

A twinkle. She caught sight of a twinkle at the edge of his wintry gaze. She'd managed to amuse him. More, she could see behind his cool scrutiny an appraisal. However grudgingly, he approved of her.

That did not make her feel at all comfortable. She had not even remotely sought the admiration of a sentient murder machine.

"There is yet much we have to do. Queen Infernyya Rebekkon awaits," he said. His armor shifted and morphed again, resuming its original configuration, and he strode away down a nearby boulevard past piles of scorched, smoking debris and shredded organic remains.

Ryujonin Worr fought down an urge to gag.

                                                                                     * * *

There was no sense of weight or gravity. They were all, each of them, simply bodies without mass.

There was no individualized perception of singularity, of sentient consciousness. There was no 'Them', no 'Us'.

There was no sense of Time. And yet there was the undeniable feel of a colossal metronomic pulse keeping beat with something strangely exotic and unwholesome, something waiting...

Frozen, everything was still, silent and suspended in a realm devoid of either true darkness or of true light, and everything was enveloped in a cloak of stifling cold. Not a polar cold, like being lost in a glacier field, not the cold one gets from being caught in a chill wind gust, but rather an awareness of an extreme absence of warmth -- the unwelcome caress of an unfriendly primeval antiquity.

It was the embrace of a vast and alien cemetery.

Intellectually, Androkambryah the Dissenter knew what had happened: the migration of the Aingyllic Horde had been very cleverly diverted into a semi-static group uncertainty facet, part of a TimeSpace interval cuboid. They were isolated from the rest of Kadaverign-Space and would never be able to complete their journey into its depths and to Hellmarrow. Androkambryah had enough presence of mind and a powerful enough intellect to process that information,but the rest of the Aingyllic Horde likely could not. More emotion and instinct-driven than himself, they would be disoriented and terrified that their migratory charge into the Metaflow's deepest and most isolated depths had been arrested by a force that, to their non-technological minds, only Gods could summon. They were caged.

They were not alone in their incarceration, though. In the shifting gyre of illuminated grayness, a great, dark Thing sat upon a pyramidal pile of floating rocks. The Thing was an entity, vaguely human in appearance, somewhat androgynous and threatening. It was a gnarled and gnomish organism, a pale and angular man built on a larger-than-human scale, but obviously a construct, an artificial being, with bio-enhancements rendering it capable of survival in the null-state vacuity of the uncertainty facet. A mystery. Androkambryah had concluded that the preternaturally immobile watcher wasn't their actual jailer, but it was no doubt their custodian, an overseer serving the will of the Qaan'Rai.

It did not speak, if indeed it was capable of vocal speech, not even to introduce itself to the Horde or to any representative of the Aingylls. It simply watched with a demeanor oozing malice and barely repressed violence. Androkambryah could tell that The Thing wanted to hurt them, that it wanted the Aingyllic Horde to make an aggressive move against its presence. And that, logically, indicated that the creature possessed power far beyond that of even the Metaflow's hardiest and most robust beings of power --- and that it was aware of how powerful it was.

Androkambryah ardently wished his warrior-exemplars were inside the cuboid with him...

However, Fae'letha Thane and Qassudei Chyald were not imprisoned within the group uncertainty facet. It was apparent that, as non-Aingyll biological entities, they had been assigned an "extra-topological" root-destination. They were anomalous entities excluded from the Horde. And that left them at war with dozens and dozens of enemies.

... Two battling mightily against a legion of Sarkaufygan War-drones ...

Her fist still clenched into a knot of super-dense bone, Qassudei withdrew it wetly from within the rent she'd punched into the chest plate armor of the War-drone that had lunged at her from over the ducking shoulders of his comrade. The War-drone who'd ducked had been dispatched by a knee-strike to his face that had shattered his protective helmet and crushed his skull. The force of the knee-strike had lifted the unconscious drone off his feet in a short hop that had partially blocked the lunge of his team mate, throwing off the Sarkaufygan's attack and exposing him to Qassudei's lethal response. Another War-drone had swiftly come up from behind the scarlet-tressed Knight-vassal and wrapped his thick arms around her upper torso, just under her arms, as he tried wrestling her to the ground where she'd be more vulnerable. Qassudei rapidly kicked back with one booted foot, catching the drone in the shin of one of his legs with force enough to break bone and, as his clench involuntarily loosened while he succumbed to the pain of a shattered tibia, she drove an elbow back into the drone's exposed side, hitting his ribcage with the force of a wrecking ball. Her assailant released her and staggered a pair of steps before falling backwards and collapsing, a gout of blood coughing out from his open mouth.

"By Paghenir's Bloody Scales, these clumsy idiots just keep piling on! This is getting a wee bit repetitive, sister," Qassudei said, directing her sarcasm towards her cohort, Fae'letha Thane. "Isn't there some way we can redirect their attention? Make them notice and chase some shiny bauble or other? Otherwise we'll likely be here all night!"

The Anistrophic Morph-Elf displayed her irritation by way of an arched eyebrow while she disarmed a charging War-drone and took his particle-cleaver machete knife to summarily dismember him and a pair of his fellow killers in a single graceful, balletic motion. Body parts freely fell to the debris-littered, blood-stained foundational surface of the crowded battlezone as Fae'letha Thane danced in and out from among her river of assailants like a wind-driven ghost, cutting this way and that with the particle-cleaver in one fist and her war-staff twirling, baton-like, in the other.

"Why is it the only time I'm your so-called 'sister' is when you need something? If you have time and breath enough to jabber on the way you love to do, then you've more than sufficient breath and energy to fight harder, clown-hair. Less talk, more death-dealing, if you please!"

"I'm not like you, Elf, I'm beginning to tire! I can't keep up this pace.  We need to make a plan...!"

Staring Qassudei in the face across the short distance separating them, Fae'letha frond, shrugging as she front-kicked an attacker high in the chest and then dropped, spinning, to sweep his unsteady legs out from under him as she said, "You CAN keep the pace and you WILL! But, as ever on those occasions when you get nervous, I'm open to suggestions."

"I'm SERIOUS, Fae'letha! And of course you'd leave it up to me...! Lazy lump! I don't like you!"

"I like you even less!"

Qassudei exhaled dramatically, managing a defiant shake of her mane of hair while reaching out to put a War-drone into a head lock. She then ferociously lifted and twisted her interlocked arms to snap his neck even through his exo-suit's metal support collar. "Fine then!"

A crisscross stream of white-hot, sizzling particle beams lashed out at the Morph-Elf warrior. She dodged the blasts and replied, "I'm busy now! Not listening!"    

Frustrated at Fae'letha's response, Qassudei whirled about and punched an oncoming assailant in the facemask with all her considerable strength. The War-drone flipped backwards head-over-heels and then plopped lifelessly onto the ground. The red-haired genebot combat unit then flipped the drone's body over onto its front and knelt beside it as she unstrapped a complex harness from off its exo-suit.

Out the corner of her eye, Fae'letha noticed the movement. "Qassudei, what are you doing?"

The Knight-vassal didn't look at the Morph-Elf as she spoke. Her manner was grim and her voice conveyed a grim resolve that set Fae'letha's nerves on edge.

"If we keep fighting like this, out in the open and nearly surrounded, they will overwhelm us through sheer numbers, no matter how strong we are, and we will be killed. And then what use will we be to Androkambryah and the rest of the Aingyllic Horde? How will we protect them? The Sarkaufygans will slaughter them all..."

"No. Wait. Stop. What are you doing, sister?"

Qassudei looked over at the slender Morph-Elf with eyes that reflected courage and sad truths. "I'm doing what you would do if you weren't worried about saving ME. As a Morph-Elf, you're an immortal. I know that. You're here to protect ME. You have always been my friend, you know. And always my sister."

"Qassudei, NO! Do NOT ...!"

The heavily-muscled genebot amazon stood up. She had slipped into the harness she'd taken from the War-drone.

It was a single-user mobile propulsion unit. She'd donned the War-drone's flight vest.

"They need a moving target," she said simply. "They'll follow me, hunt me, because that's their programming. That'll split the pack. You can more than handle the rest of them."

She didn't wait for Fae'letha's response. Qassudei triggered the drone's flight vest and, in a flash of lemony-yellow light, soared high into the Voidic stratosphere, rocketing away.

All that came out from Fae'letha's mouth was a soft and heart-rending gasp. "... no ...!"

Easily three dozen Sarkaufygans turned their emotionless faces up, tracking Qassudei's path across the sky and then they, too, fired up their mobile flight units and jetted away after her.

And in the next moment she was alone, facing a murderous, swarming mob of War-drones half as large as that she'd confronted only a few heartbeats before.

She attacked them in a fury that would have terrorized all the berserker demons in Hell.

                                                                                        ***    

Silence makes a sound, toneless and sunken, a resonant muteness, and it surrounded her as she forced herself to reconnect with her central assembly analytics hub so she could again access her neural network. She was submerged in an electrodynamic stasis bordering on hibernation, swimming in silence inside a universe of irridescent neuro-mechanical onyx, a calm liquid blackness. Her identity and mobile autonomy subroutines would not let her stay there. To do so would be to surrender to the state of torpor into which she'd been forcibly driven. Her performance directives would not allow that. She was not asleep, only disconnected, resident in a local node. The attempt to activate her data link layer without being forced to resort to external management of the analytics hub's mechanical physical interface was painstakingly turgid.

Identify and isolate the path and then transmit the signal, override attempts to stifle and deny authorization, boost the signal. Initiate Administrative access, await authentication, launch profile directories and program application interface.

She could see herself suspended in a sitting position while drifting in mid-air, alone in blank space enclosed within a massive globe, a solitary child wearing an anonymous face locked into a unexpressive mask.

This had not been her choice. Struggle, grapple with it, fight it. Control the flow of data frames. Conquer it.

Evolve into the enduring and impressive power that was the truth of her creation. Become that most unique and greatest of all the gargantuan masterpieces of advanced design and engineering, the mightiest of all shiftships, ever built. Arise as The Glide.

Awaken.

NeeSharim reacted to the feel of gravity and the sensation of being again housed within her body, ignoring the painful flood of tactile sensation as her external sheathe's multiple integration adapters scanned and re-acquired prior established mobile node, networked configurations.

The lonely child with the blank-faced stare wiggled her fingers and toes as she gradually unfolded from her sitting posture. She stood up, floating at the center of a giant sphere of formerly blank space. Her fish-bowl world quickly expanded and the emptiness was replaced by an incoming flood of visual imagery.

The image of the child wavered and, her once dead eyes lighting up with dynamic and ferocious cognizance, she faded into a background of voluminous memory.

The all-encompassing ocean of silence evaporated, dissolving, to be replaced by an assortment of noises familiar to her: the sound of her engines and of the energy flowing through her many transport conduits and circuitry.

"I'm back," she whispered aloud.

She searched her physical vicinity for biological life-forms. None were found. She recalled that Pylott, Neuronia Syngulareus and Poli'Artta Ranzireth were off ship in Lobarth Ceryndum, traveling together as an Away Team. She expanded her search and refined it to look for life signs specific to The Glide's crew... No Mune'stahr, no Tregg. She found nothing. No one else was on the ship.

The enemy had not even thought enough of her as an opponent to warrant the option of boarding the shiftship to dismantle or destroy her in-person. To them, she was just machinery, a device, and so, ultimately, expendable and unworthy of the respect awarded a worthwhile foe.

An insult.

Immediately she noticed three very interesting things. One: her body hurt, she was experiencing an actual physical ache. Two: she was experiencing a rare welling of a feeling she identified as being anxiety at the realization that the crew were missing. She was worried. Three: she experienced a hot wave of enervation washing across her conscious mind, like a storm threatening to overturn her usually placid mental state -- she was angry. She wanted revenge.   Such observations were very surprising. And after existing, after being conscious and aware, for as long a time as she had, surprise was something she absolutely treasured.

NeeSharim's perfect, idealized features became animated, making her even more beautiful, although that doll-like beauty was tinged with a dark exuberance.

She was going to enjoy hurting the unforgivably arrogant and undeniably powerful sentient biologicals who had tried to kill her.

                                                                                          ***

Tregg was lying prone on the boulevard's stained asphalt, partially draped in dusty litter and fragmented debris left over from a time when people were actually able to walk the streets of Lobarth Ceryndum free of the yoke of Fellmanghul's telepathic bondage.

The desperate effort to abruptly teleport himself and Mune'stahr from off the deck of The Glide had cost the mage dearly. He was nearly drained of all his parahuman, extrasensory vitality, the weird and undefineable quantum fields he mentally manipulated exacting a brutal toll on the limits of his all-too-human vitality. Mune'stahr's bio-telemetry scan had revealed the frantic effort had brought the powerful, but aged Chronodigitator to the brink of death.

The ship had been compromised. NeeSharim had been either deactivated or captured by a faceless enemy. And he hadn't seen it coming...

It had happened on his Watch. HIS Watch. Pylott had depended on him to keep their home base secure. But he had failed.

He had to set that right.   Had to.

It was in his blood...

Even though they'd been classified as "Officials of Harmonious Enlightenment" by the Hegemonic Emperium's Ministry of Social Order and by the Ministry of Apostolic Exultation, the Crimson Abbots, a stridently grim monastical brotherhood, had worked diligently his younger years to teach him the value of patience and restraint. The Abbots were responsible for taking orphaned and delinquent boys, and educating them, as well as intentionally indoctrinating them, into a highly-regimented, austere military life in service to Teshiwahur's ambitious World-Father. Some of the boys had been street urchins, others, like Mune'stahr, had been socially alienated malcontents and criminals. But overall, the children of the "Priory Abattoiryus", as the brotherhood was properly called, were all destined to be more than just soldiers. They were the World-Father's Princes-Among-Pawns.

After benchmarking their genetic and intellectual potential, the boys were assigned their slots for development. All were exposed to a core curriculum that included comprehensive lessons in sociology, politics and history, in science and engineering, and in leadership skills with the aim to create professionally-polished and intelligent military men unafraid of putting the greater needs and goals of the Emperium above their own. Those boys inducted into the ranks of the "Priory Abattoiryus" were not rank and file canon-fodder for faraway battlefields, but rather the crème de la crème of human combat development. Alpha wolves born to lead a feral pack. And the very best among those were assigned the classification of "Star Rover" and were steered towards astronautical training for the Emperium's Extraplanetary High Frontier program.

And a few, like Mune'stahr despite his criminal history as a thuggish member of a street gang, were shepherded into multiple martial disciplines. Mune'stahr had been an unruly and disobedient, rebellious adolescent from the city-state of Oshplaktur's Fourth District, called Wrushak. He was a descendent of the tribal conglomerate of the Qa'Sarkoon, a subclass of citizenry who were recognized as being Teshiwahur's most ordered, most spartan-like, and meticulous caste. By normal social standards, he'd been born with many economic and social advantages, but he had turned away from his middle class upbringing in pursuit of wanton thrills and violent misadventure. His anger, thoughtlessness and rejection of homogenized morality had resulted in him being branded a hoodlum outcast --- but to the Crimson Abbots of the Priory Abattoiryus he had been a diamond in the rough, born to the art of bloodletting and organized combat. From the start, Mune'stahr had taken to the program with a rare self-assured zeal and unmatched aptitude. And so the Emperium invested in the evolution of the street thug to his eventual blossoming as an elite covert action space warrior.

But he'd never lost his disdain and distaste for the authority of others above him. He did not trust those who gave orders for others to die from afar. He couldn't be loyal to those who did not fight in the blood and the muck beside him. In a very short time, his defiantly insubordinate and quarrelsome, nonconformist nature had derailed his military career. There'd been no choice but for him to be cashiered out from a commission in the Emperium's standardized armed forces. But to most Extraplanetary High Frontier officers, he was still a valuable commodity in war time situations and no military invests so much in any single individual as to be casual about tossing him, and his skills, aside. He could still be useful. So he became a mercenary military contractor, yet remained a special operations mercenary who still remembered his Honorial Code values as an ex-Star Rover.

A single quote burned at the center of Riktonn Mune'stahr's darkened soul: "If they stand behind you, give them Protection. If they stand beside you, give them Respect. If they stand against you, show them No Mercy."

Poli'Artta Ranzireth and Klauvane Tregg came to him in need and he had promised them his protection. Keeshura Pylott and NeeSharim had both accepted him for all his shortcomings and become his comrades-at-arms and his family. Though yet a stranger, her motives not entirely clear, Lieutenant Commander Neuronia Syngulareus had extended her hand in friendship and had fought beside him.

For Mune'stahr, the time for analysis and diplomacy had long since passed. His people had been threatened, hurt and abducted. The Enemy had enslaved and preyed upon an entire city of untrained civilians, that enemy's favorite domesticated monsters victimizing the entire population. He himself had been forcibly driven from off his own ship, from his sanctuary -- his home -- here in the Ventriculum by a foul and ignoble foe who remained cloaked in the shadows. Time to set that right.

And that Righteousness burned down to the cellular level of who and what he was.

It was very much like a fire in his blood...

Mune'stahr activated his exo-suit's Remote Session Cybernetic Access console and systematically scanned the read-out from all The Glide's data trasmission protocol streams. Good, he could still contact the shiftship and he maintained authorization to access the internal network stack. That meant that although her mobile form was likely deactivated, NeeSharim's artificial intelligence multi-mode array was still online. To protect Tregg and sustain his life-threatening injuries, Mune'stahr tapped remotely into The Glide's bio-med network and directed targeted-stimulous support redirector connectivity towards the fallen mage. The Glide would keep him safe and boost his metabolic and neurological biosystems until Mune'stahr could get the man back aboard ship.

That done, he initiated an InterHost Acknowledgement Utility that scanned all Glide-oriented technological transmission frequencies until he located Pylott's armor on a wireframe contour-map projection. Her armor immedately completed the Ack handshake and relayed back to him Pylott's vitals. She was alive and active, all systems nominal. Good.

And with that, under his retractable helmet, he bared his teeth in a smile that was horrific in its implications...

Time to go hunting.

                                                                                * * *