Sunrider Veniczar: Chapter 2 "Gestalt" (Indefinite Hiatus Project) (Patreon)

Prologue: "Arcadius"

Chapter 1 "Alice"

Alice lay strewn over the uncomfortable seats in the passenger compartment, barely conscious as she stared up at the metal “roof” of her lifepod with empty eyes. Her clothes clung to her body, crawling uncomfortably with the sticky sensation of dried sweat and sloughed skin. The entire pod stank of her stale odor, but the worse was the stench of blood. Even though the worse of it had been washed away by the deluge from her sister's suspension tube, the smell and feeling persisted; Alice wondered if any amount of scrubbing in the universe would ever make her hands clean again.

The pod had never been designed with long-distance travel in mind, as Alice had quickly found out. The water filtration system could barely purify more than two liters a day, leaving her perpetually thirsty as the system struggled to keep up with her increasingly concentrated urine. The food rations she'd found were a chalky, crumbly substance, offering nothing by way of palatability and, more than anything, exacerbating towards her already parched throat. Alice could barely tell whether the gnawing hunger chewing away at her stomach or the tasteless, gag-inducing food substitute was worse. Even the pod's air scrubbers seemed faulty, giving the air a metallic, unpleasant quality even minus the revolting odor rising off her body and clothes.

At the end of the first four days of travel, Alice had thought she'd experienced the worse. With nothing to do except lie across the uncomfortable passenger seats, their contoured curves digging into her back and spine, she found herself unable to sleep, endlessly flashing back; killing Ashada, losing her sister, watching her home destroyed by the singularity she created. Over. And Over. And Over again.

But if the first four days had been punishment, Alice had truly passed to hell properly as the hours fused and blurred, bleeding together and whirling away even as each moment refused to pass except in the most agonizingly slow trickle, leaving her with nothing but her madness as she screamed, raved, and cried to the palpable presence just on the edge of her consciousness, always one degree out of sight from the corner of her eye. Eventually, even those hallucinations stopped, leaving her spent, empty as she lay defeated, broken, existing more out of default than any true will to survive.

“Alert.” A cool, digital voice spoke up, breaking days of silence. “Alert.”

Alice stirred languidly from her stupor, peeling herself off the seats slowly. She licked her cracked lips with a rough, scratchy tongue, groping for the survival canteen underneath the water filtration device. Lifting the canteen to her mouth shakily, she took a pull of the stale, almost rancid water, struggling not to spit out her valuable supply and forcing herself to swallow each sip with a shudder.

“Alert. Alert.”

Alice made a gurgling, unintelligible sound, her voice unrecognizably hoarse from disuse and thirst. Slopping over to the pilot's seat weakly, her muscles atrophied after days of laying comatose for so long, she caught sight of her reflection. The face that stared back was barely recognizable, pale and ghoulish with jack-o-lantern hollowness in her eyes and the expression of shell-shocked horror on her face. Her hair lay in lank, oily tangles framing her face, completely disheveled from her ordinarily neat plait.

Turning away from her sunken reflection, Alice hit the appropriate button to have the pod's computer update her of whatever situation it had deemed fit for her attention.

“Target coordinates reached. Beginning warp transition decay. All passengers must secure themselves immediately.”

Alice merely slumped in the seat as an automated crash harness deployed over her torso.

“Transitioning from warp. Decay confirmed.”

The entire pod began to shake furiously, rattling Alice’s tiny frame like a marble in a cup as the shearing stresses of warp decay threatened to tear her fragile craft asunder. Dimly, Alice wondered how long it would take her to die if her pod did spontaneously decompress from a hull breach. Probably not fast enough to make it painless…

Another violent pitch slammed her head into her seat’s headrest, sending splitting pain through her skull and causing dark stars to burst in front of her eyes, driving the morbid thought from her mind. Slowly, the pod began to stabilize, the shaking evening out before transitioning smoothly to eerie calm, the same as the past 8 days of warp travel. Blinking, Alice struggled to clear her vision, watching the sight of her target destination emerge as though from behind a thick veil of fog.

A planet, bright with the color of dusty amber, loomed large on the pod’s screen, growing with each passing minute as she drifted inexorably into its gravitational influence.

“Gestalt, class seven rocky planet,” announced the life pod’s computer as though advertising it as a vacation destination. “Warp decay trajectory and velocity limit available approach solutions given local gravitational and atmospheric data. Compensating.”

Alice felt slight fluctuations in the microgravity as her pod aligned itself more favorably.

“Beginning orbital insertion and atmospheric entry. Estimated probability of survival: 40%.”

Alice merely groaned, closing her eyes, unsure whether the probability came as welcome or unwelcome news.

Gestalt grew terrifyingly quickly on the main screen as Alice's pod was caught in its gravitational pull, accelerating as it fell towards the planet's atmosphere and surface.

“Atmospheric entry confirmed,” announced the pod. “Please expect turbulence.”

Turbulence was a euphemism if there ever was one to describe the wild shaking and rattling that came next. As Alice's pod dragged a fiery streak across Gestalt's atmosphere, cutting through the upper layers of the mesosphere like a knife through butter down to the stratosphere, the shaking grew progressively worse as the atmosphere thickened.

“Deploying flaps for air braking.”

Multiple plates along the pod's heat shield blasted outwards as micro-explosives fired, blowing the rivets holding down the hull plates and allowing for atmospheric flaps to deploy. A horrible grating sound reverberated through the pod as the entire craft's structure strained with the stress of air braking, jostling the tiny vehicle and its sole passenger unforgivingly.

Alice watched, grim faced as her pod's hull heated to a glowing yellow. Beads of sweat ran down her face as she gritted her teeth, not entirely sure if it was due to the soaring internal temperature of the pod or its hair-raising, rocky descent to the surface of Gestalt.

“Warning, exterior stresses exceeding tolerable limits,” announced her navcomputer a moment before she heard the tearing scream of metal shearing away from her pod.

On screen, the pod's air brakes peeled away, fragmenting and twisting away from the battered lifepod, causing it to flip end over end with uneven turbulence.

“Hurk...” Alice tasted bitterness well up from her empty stomach as it flipped end over end with the pod, hanging onto the fabric of her crash harness with a death vise. The pod shuddered even more ferociously a moment later.

“Encountering troposphere. Excessive velocity incompatible with safe landing. Deploying chute early.”

Decelerating suddenly, the entire pod groaned menacingly. Alice groaned in pain as her crash harness bit into her thin frame mercilessly. The cry of fatigued metal filled the pod before a snap and tearing sound overruled it, plunging the pod into free fall once again.

“Main chute destroyed. Deploying reserve chute.”

The same process repeated, albeit with a less brutal jerk as the smaller back-up chute unfurled, somehow managing to stay attached to the pod's frame. Alice's eyes danced as they tried to keep the rapidly counting down altimeter and speed gauge in sight with the shaking of the pod and her body.

The surface of Gestalt was clearly visible now as her pod arced over the dune-filled sandy landscape below, blasting past rocky outcroppings that jutted out over the monotony of the desert like knife tips of basalt and obsidian and over empty, dry desert wadis with cracked, sunbaked dirt. Just the sight of the desolate planet surface beneath her was enough to magnify her thirst a hundred-fold; nothing within visual or scanner range seemed to be remotely similar to an artificial or human establishment.

“Please brace for impact.”

Alice would have screamed, but the ground raced up too quickly, swallowing her pod whole as it plowed across one of the knife-like rock formations with a horrendous grating sound and shower of sparks, sending the craft spinning like a top before it slammed into the ground.

******

Alice struggled to breath, realizing with horror that something sat on her chest, crushing any possibility of breath away from her. Panicking, she tried to open her eyes, but even they had glued shut. The most primal, basic instinct in her brain screamed out with anguish and fear, lashing out, demanding survival against any odds. Alone, in the darkness, lungs on fire, Alice felt her consciousness slip away layer by layer as death, at long last, drifted tantalizingly close.

A strange, disgustingly wet sound came from a long ways away and Alice felt her body being dragged away to the side. Like breaking over a wave, her head finally punched out of the darkness and into blinding brilliance. With a huge, tortured gasp, Alice took shuddering breath after breath, coughing, hacking, and filling her burning lungs with hot, dusty air before promptly vomiting yet again.

She had the sensation of laying out in the burning heat for some time before finally coming to properly, sitting up with a spinning head, still blinded by the dazzling light overhead. Squinting, Alice breathed deeply, watching her new world come into focus gradually.

She was lying in a pool of white-gray mush with the consistency of paper mache on the ground, apparently carried out by its current as it drained from the mangled remains of her life pod. Lifting her hand up to her face, she watched as some of the semi-solid dissolved further, running between her fingers as a liquid. Dampening and cushioning foam, deployed by the life pod as an extreme life preservation method to maximize her chances of survival given the hard landing. That explained the moment of breathless panic she'd experienced right after regaining consciousness as the foam had not yet dissolved sufficiently after impact to permit her free movement. Once enzymatic activity had loosened the bonds of the foam, however, the pod had blasted open its main airlock, allowing the contents, and putative passengers, to drain out to “safety.” Disgusting, but it was probably solely responsible for her life, even if she felt like one gigantic bruise.

Struggling to her feet and slipping slightly in the now soupy mixture, Alice raised a hand to shield her eyes from the merciless sun overhead, looking around her at the desert wasteland she'd landed in.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire...” she muttered to herself quite literally. Indeed, Gestalt's sun was a blazing ball of light and heat, beating down on her and scorching the surrounding landscape. Staring out at the wavering heat lines and mirages in the distance, Alice gave thanks that she was wearing a light off-white researcher's uniform. Anything else would have probably cooked her alive.

Staggering to the pod, she gave the craft one quick look over before withdrawing in disappointment. Nothing had survived the crash; it was a miracle she was still alive. The entire pod's power supply had been torn out on impact, likely winding up kilometers away from her pod's final resting place judging from the long streaks in the sand her craft had carved before finally coming to a grinding halt at her crash site. What technology the pod had contained was now trashed, either by viscous remnants of the cushioning foam or by the impact itself. Most importantly, the pod's water filtration system was now reduced to no more than a mess of tubing and gummed up filters, having been smashed open, strewn across the pod in a hundred pieces, and then drowned in the dissolving foam media.

Alice fought the urge to break down and cry in frustration. Waste of water. Without the filtration device, she estimated she'd last less than a day and a half on this wretched desert dustball of a planet. Yet, staying with the pod accomplished nothing, even more of a sure death sentence than wandering out into the desert would be. With that cheerful thought in mind, Alice sighed heavily and eyed the long gouge the pod had made as it plowed to a standstill. It seemed like as good a direction to head in as any; every direction she looked in revealed nothing but more desert and rock formations.

Trudging off in the direction her pod had come from, Alice set out, her bruised body and atrophied muscles protesting rebelliously as the sun overhead promised swift delirium and slow demise.

******

After a few hours of painstaking walking, Alice was already beginning to regret her decision to not simply lay next to her pod and die with a modicum of rest. Instead, she found herself scaling endless sand dune after sand dune, scrabbling up their sliding faces only to tumble down the other side in a cloud of dust. The searing sun had all but drained her final reserves of determination and strength, burning it away and leaving her sweating uncontrollably, sick to the stomach, thirstier than she'd ever felt in her life, and on the edge of collapse. Staggering up to the top of yet another dune in the endless stretch of desert, Alice teetered for a moment before crumpling to her knees and falling face first down the other side of the dune, her mouth filled with the taste and gritty sensation of dust as it coated her parched throat.

Laying still for a moment, she had the feeling that if she simply let go she'd likely perish before the sun could even set. She'd toy with the idea for a minute before sighing, pushing herself up to her aching and stinging blister-covered feet, and gritting her teeth to start the entire process over again.

Like so, Alice continued her pyrrhic journey until the sun started to dip down, turning blood red. It should have come as some relief, but Alice was beyond caring, simply stumbling from one spot to the next without aim or direction, delirious from heat exhaustion and dehydration. She barely even noticed as the sand dunes gave way to solid rock, admitting her into a grotto of basalt slabs and rock formations as the landscape shifted from one geological region to another.

What she did notice, however, was the most tantalizing smell she'd ever smelled in her life, drifting on the early evening breeze, still a hot breath on her skin. Luscious and sweet like the most succulent and juicy of fruit, the smell beckoned towards her, urging her forward. Taking a deeper sniff, Alice felt herself shuffle towards its source, hardly daring to believe that she might have found refuge. An oasis perhaps?

The rocky ground suddenly dropped away as she kept walking, forming a strange, bowl-like depression of sloped rock as though a crater had been gouged out of the solid ground. What caught her interest, however, wasn't the odd geological formation, but what lay at its center. At the very bottom of the crater was a pool. A liquid pool. Green fluid lapped gently at the rocks on the “shore” below, a simple slide down the gentle curving slope. There was no doubt this was the source of the tantalizing smell, which came off in waves, stronger than ever. Alice felt her mouth water as she stared at the green pool, feeling its call even through the fog of her delirium.

Hastily, Alice lowered herself down, sliding on her rump down the curve of the pit. Some pebbles dislodged as she did so, tumbling down ahead of her into the green pool, splashing merrily into its thick depths. Gasping, Alice half rolled, half scrambled down the remainder of the wall before collapsing to her knees in front of the pool, greedily dipping her hands into it and scooping its contents into her mouth with trembling hands.

The burst of flavor was exotic yet familiar at the same time, a combination of every delicious fruit she'd ever tasted, ripe and rich in a way no one fruit could ever have managed. And her thirst, it vanished almost immediately, washing away with cool, liquid comfort as the miraculous drink slaked her deepest thirst and soothed her raw throat.

Panting, Alice plunged her hands in once again, determined to drink her fill. As she dipped them beneath the surface, she made to cup her fingers together to gather the liquid once more, but nothing happened. With slowly dawning horror, Alice felt a numb creeping from her fingertips up to her arms. The same for her legs; a spreading, tingling and numbing sensation of a thousand pinpricks crept upwards, leaving her too clumsy to do anything except to crudely flop away from the edge of the pool.

Poison. Alice realized with a sinking feeling the one universal maxim of the universe: There was never a free lunch.

The green pool in front of her began to ripple, gently at first but with increasing agitation as something came to the surface from its shallow depths. Breaking the surface, a large, revolting tube of meat and scales rose, seeming to loom over Alice as it turned its blind head left and right, seeking out her trace. With horror, Alice looked upon the creature which had lured her to its nest. Pale and sticky looking, its large, grub-like body was lined sporadically with iridescent scales swirling with all colors of the rainbow. But its head was the truly loathsome aspect of its biology; blind save for a cluster of jelly eyes at the top of its dome, the worm's fleshy head ended in a simple maw, an open, jawless circle filled with row after row of razor teeth. About twice as large as a normal human being, the worm's body trembled with anticipation, apparently pleased in a dull, animalistic way at its quarry.

Alice kicked clumsily with her non responsive legs, flailing as she tried to push herself further away from the despicable creature. Unfortunately, her movements only seemed to alert it further to her presence as it slithered closer, its head locking onto her properly. Unable to do anything but flounder, Alice cursed her life for the unknowable time in the last few days. Here she was, one of the most brilliant minds in the galaxy, apparently engineered for nothing short of perfection, something greater than any human being could ever aspire to be, let alone some base creature. And yet, her body trembled rebelliously, refusing to heed her commands, sabotaged by a simple trick of biology and bringing her to the ignominious level of mere nourishment and mulch for a foul lifeform such as this.

Alice gritted her teeth, hating her position of impotence and weakness more than anything else in the universe at that moment.

“Human weakness at its most obvious: the inability to accept reality for what it is. No matter what, we can’t help but to rail against accepting the unexpected.”

Ashada's voice rose to taunt her once again as the grub moved in for the kill, its razor teeth beginning to flex, green saliva, the same as the liquid in the pool, draining between their rows in eager anticipation.

“SHUT UP!” Alice screamed in raw fury, wincing on the inside at her choice of last words.

“Now that's not very nice...”

Alice's neck snapped backwards as she heard, impossibly, a man's voice, strong, brash, and filled with the sound of laughter.

“And I hadn't even opened my mouth yet...”

A shower of pebbles and rocks dislodged and showered over Alice as she watched a man, tall with thin, almost gangly limbs, rappel down the side of the pit awkwardly with a handheld cable device. “Hang on!” he shouted to Alice.

Confused, the worm began to toss its head, now unsure about its target with the newcomer.

“I'll get you out in just a-”

The man's boot slipped on an outcropping of rock, sending him crashing down gracelessly in a heap of limbs and steel wiring beside her. Up close, Alice could see the man's face was obscured by some kind of dust mask with a tattered, patterned scarf wrapped around his neck and halfway up his masked face. The rest of him was similarly garbed in a dusty, second hand, once colorful poncho of sorts made of light, billowing fabric. From underneath the poncho's neckline, a tattered, but clean high white collar stood upright from his shirt underneath, rippling like fins in the wind and tickling the very edges of his mask's chin. The poncho ended before his waist, revealing a loose fitting leather belt that slung a holster and pistol over a rugged pair of blue fabric pants down his right thigh.

“Oops.” The man turned his blank dust mask to look at her while untangling his limbs, apparently through some kind of internal projection as his mask completely and opaquely obscured everything about his face. “Forget that happened would you?”

Alice would have said something scathing. Would have rolled her eyes derisively. Would have slapped him for the carefree laughter in his voice even as the filthy beast from the pool closed in for a two-for-one special. Except she was too busy fighting her utter lack of muscle tone trying not to drown in her own drool.

Struggling up, the man pushed a button on the side of his device. Nothing happened.

“Ah... of course...” Her would-be rescuer looked at the rappelling device he carried and cocked his head to the side as he tried mashing the button again, impotently. “Of all the times for this old piece of trash to clap out...”

Alice groaned, unsure whether she just wanted it over with immediately or if she'd rather watch the fool in front of her get eaten first.

The man grabbed her under an armpit and hauled her behind him, putting his body between her and the worm, standing and pulling a pistol out of its holster with a deft movement. For a moment he was the picture of a paladin, as the breeze caught his cloak, allowing it to billow to the side as he stared down the worm and leveled his pistol at its head, standing proud and tall over her, his free hand pushing her behind him protectively.

The illusion immediately shattered as he emptied his pistol's clip, the weapon's barrel jumping wildly with recoil. Half a dozen rounds somehow and mind-bogglingly managing to miss the creature with the remainder of the small caliber rounds merely enraging it.

Alice flopped back, giving up entirely and deciding she wanted to see the man eaten first after all.

Obligingly, the angry worm reared up with a roar, apparently intending to come crashing down upon the man with its gaping maw and swallow him whole.

BANG

The worm's head exploded spectacularly in a shower of meat and viscera. The trunk of the creature teetered for a moment before tipping in the direction of its last movement as a living creature; directly towards both the man and Alice.

With a great, earthshaking thud, the creature slammed down on the two. Alice felt the man's hands grab her in embrace a split second before the wall of flesh came down on the two of them and the world turned black.

******

Consciousness was an overestimation of what Alice returned to when she opened her eyes. Blearily, she tried to make sense of her confusing memories and remember where she was. The worm had come crashing down and then... she wasn't sure, although snippets of memory came back like a lantern shining through a thick forest. The rushing sensation of air through her hair, a swoop of speed in her stomach, strong, gentle hands laying her down.

Blinking, Alice felt her world clear a bit, revealing the night sky, a dark and endless ocean of stars stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. Lolling her head to the side, she realized she was laying upon a simple, rough spun bedroll with a worn, but soft blanket draped over her body. A fire crackled merrily to her right.

“We're secure here, no contacts for thirty kilometers in all directions,” said a female voice in slow, gracefully lilting speech, almost musical in quality.

“Good,” the cheerful, perpetually amused voice from the man who had leaped into the worm's pit was immediately recognizable. “Speaking of safe, were you trying to save us or kill us with the sandworm? I wasn't sure I could tell.”

Alice could practically hear the other woman's scowl, but when she spoke it was again with a calm, utterly relaxed tone. “What about the girl? She could be one of them.”

Alice stiffened, picking up on the suspicion in the woman's voice.

“I doubt it,” the laughing man's voice turned thoughtful. “I don't think an Imperial spy would have been so inept as to drop down to the planet without at least doing her homework. No, whoever she is, I expect-”

The man stopped talking suddenly, sensing almost supernaturally that Alice was listening in. Pulling off his dust mask and the scarf obscuring his face, he let the mask fall to the ground carelessly. Taking a deep, appreciative breath, he shook his head, running a hand through his short chocolate hair, ruffling it up messily so that it stood up and stuck out at odd angles. The look suited him however, complimenting his roguish grin and the mischievous glint in his brown eyes as well as his voice had. The rest of the man's face was handsome in a rough, charmingly uncivilized way, topped off with short facial hair in a rebellious, natural, grows-as-it-pleases beard. Altogether, the man carried the image of a frontier colony homesteader who simultaneously managed to blend with his rough environment and pull off the easy-going good looks of an altogether more privileged background.

“I see you're awake,” the man walked towards her with a carefree grin on his face. “I'm surprised, I would have expected that poison to take at least until the morning to wear off.”

Alice groaned, propping herself up on her elbows.

“Whoa! Here.” The man knelt by her side and helped her up, his hands calloused, but gentle. From under his cloak, he pulled out a battered metal canteen, opening it and offering it to her. “Thirsty?”

Alice grabbed the canteen, hearing its contents slosh within and drank deeply, gulping the clean water as fast as she could before choking and spluttering, showering the man as she coughed.

“Slow down, slow down!” The man laughed and gave her back a gentle thump before relieving her of the canteen and wiping his face carelessly. “My name's Obarin. Obarin Knight. What's yours?”

Alice simply stared, unsure what to make of Obarin's upfront and confidently brash approach. “Alice,” she said finally, staring at him for any reaction.

The sparkle in his eye seemed to dance as though she had just told an amusing joke. “Just Alice?”

“Yes.” Alice's tone was blunt. Whoever this Obarin was, she was not about to get into her entire existential crisis and history when they'd just met.

“Alright.” Obarin grinned, no less amused than before. “Just 'Alice' then. What's your story Alice?”

Alice bit her tongue, measuring Obarin up. She knew she owed her rescuers some sort of answer out of common decency, but she also had the sense that the man was judging her just as hard. She looked into the man's deep brown eyes, finding a razor sharp keenness and perceptiveness at complete odds with his happy-go-lucky attitude and clumsy nature. Alice swallowed, deciding to tell the truth, some of it anyways.

“I'm from Diode. Came here on an escape pod. Planet's gone. A lot of people died.” Alice looked down at her bloodstained clothes, deciding to leave the part about her role in all of it unsaid. “I made it out in an escape pod, crash landed with nothing but the clothes on my back, wandered into the desert and almost wound up as worm food. You know the rest.”

Obarin nodded sagely, “Ah, well that explains the re-entry contact. I'm guessing since you were empty handed there's nothing worth salvaging back at the craft? We thought it might be some kind of Imperial supply drop and came out to do a little recon, lucky for you.”

“I'm not Imperial,” insisted Alice. Judging from the undertones she picked up from both Obarin and the woman he traveled with, being Imperial sounded like an unhealthy designation.

Obarin snorted. “I believe you. No Imperial spy would have ever been dumb enough to land in the boonies like you did, never mind in worm country.” Turning to his companion, he called out. “Happy now? She's not one of them.”

He turned back to Alice and gestured to indicate the other woman who stood a distance away aloofly. “This is Jemhyr Vars.”

The woman was unlike any Alice had seen before. Dark, swarthy, with her long, waist length black hair styled into dozens of rope-like braids that each ended with a single white bead, Jemhyr rolled her eyes and strode away from the two on her long, thin legs, her movements personifying grace as her feet seemed to glide over the ground rather than walk. Unlike Obarin, she did not wear any mask, although she too wore the same patterned scarf across the lower half of her face and a formerly colorful cloak of the same style as Obarin's. Also unlike Obarin, she was heavily and obviously armed, an oversized sniper rifle slung across her back. Stooping momentarily, Jemhyr picked up Obarin's fallen mask before turning to scan the horizon through a battered monocular lens, ever vigilant.

“Never seen a Denari before huh?” Obarin asked rhetorically, seeing the non-recognition in Alice's eyes. “Well that settles it, you're definitely not from this quadrant of the galaxy even.”

“I don't even know where we are right now,” muttered Alice. “Other than the fact this pit of a planet is called 'Gestalt'.”

“We're on the edge of the Denari Expanse, north-western quadrant of the galaxy on a standard galactic projection,” continued Obarin, shifting in tone slightly as he launched into explanation. “In ancient times, the Denari were a loose confederation of independent nations and interplanetary alliances, each with their own history and culture unified more broadly by a common progenitor ancient culture that once spanned their known space. The Denari believe themselves to be a separate, parallel evolution of humanity, but most of our history texts suggest they may have been a separate migrant wave from the initial settling of the galaxy. A lot of academics point to their appearance and culture as evidence of the Founder Effect on a galactic scale. It's all moot now, of course,” Obarin's voice turned bitter. “When the Holy Ryuvian Empire encountered the Denari Expanse, they found themselves covetous of the ore-rich worlds of the Denari, taking the entire Denari Expanse by force and reorganizing the “barbarians” into a collective entity now known as the Denari.”

Obarin's fist clenched and genuine anger crept into his voice. “Dozens of generations of cultural identity wiped away in an instant, the art and history of entire civilizations tossed into the flames, all to stoke the imperialistic ego of a man, fat on a throne halfway across the galaxy who saw these noble, independent people as nothing more than dark skinned savages to blind and rob at the end of a barrel.”

Alice said nothing, but felt something stir in her chest, the faintest glimmer of a lifeline dropping down to the depths of her despair and now pointless existence. There was something about Obarin, some kind of fire that flickered behind his eyes and electricity in his words that seemed to reach out to her, pulling her from the pit of apathy and self-depreciation she'd lain in since escaping Diode. The passion, the genuine feeling emanating from the man cut through her personal darkness, a lighthouse guiding her to safe shores from the storm she'd weathered since.

“Fast forward through one thousand years of brutal occupation, repression, exploitation, and pillage, the Holy Ryuvian Empire had finally succumbed to its own corruption, weakening and withdrawing from its outer territories like the Denari Expanse to shore up their core worlds. At the outbreak of the Alliance-Imperial war, the Denari allied with the Solar Alliance, fighting for their freedom and against the encroachment of the New Empire bitterly to the war's end. After the Treaty of Versta was signed between the Solar Alliance and the New Empire, the Denari Expanse was, on paper, allowed to join the Solar Alliance. In practice, the politicians of the Solar Alliance decided that footing the bill for the humanitarian relief and economic modernization of the Denari worlds was not in the interests of Solaris. For all intents and purposes, the Solar Congress and the Solar Alliance at large ignores to this day the needs and interests of the Denari people, treating them like second-class citizens and probably wishing they didn't exist in the first place.” Obarin finished his history lecture with a scowl.

“For their part, the Denari have more or less agreed to stay out of sight from the Solar Alliance proper in order to officially remain within the borders of the Alliance to deter the New Empire from any imperialistic agendas they might have for this region of space. The lesser of two evils I suppose,” Obarin gave a world weary sigh as he sat down next to Alice, looking deeply into the fire, lost in thought.

“I see...” Alice sat up properly, feeling better than she had in days. “Thank you.”

“Eh?” Obarin jerked from his reverie, his eyebrows quirking up in an expression of surprise. “For what?”

Alice stared at the genuine confusion that stole over Obarin's face. “For... for the talk,” she stammered awkwardly.

“He's not used to people paying attention to his lectures,” said Jemhyr, returning to the fire from her post. “Much less thanking him for it.” She turned to Obarin, handing him his fallen mask with an air of reverence. “Here, you shouldn't drop a thing like that so casually.”

Obarin accepted the mask with a sigh, rubbing the dust off of it with the corner of his cloak and revealing a shining silver surface underneath.

“What is it?” asked Alice, looking at the simple, elegant and featureless mask with curiosity. What she had first misconstrued as some kind of dust filter was clearly more given the deference Jemhyr had shown the mask, although Obarin tossed it up and down in his hands like a toy, carelessly.

“This?” Obarin tried to catch the mask deftly, but failed, fumbling it as it fell to the ground between them.

Jemhyr only groaned with the tone of someone having long suffered Obarin's quirks and clumsiness.

“The MASK OF ARCADIUS!” he said in a deep, resonating, intoning voice like some fraudulent fortune teller at a carnival, waving his hands dramatically.

Alice picked up the metal mask, hefting it and turning it over in her hands, running her fingers along its battered, dusty surface. “Who's Arcadius?”

Obarin plucked the mask from her fingers and held it up to his face. “Everyone, and no one! Arcadius was the founder of the Compact, but he is no longer a man, but an idea. The immortal leader of the Compact, the embodiment of its ideals and aspirations! In a way, every member of the Compact is Arcadius, carrying forward his vision. But it is I who wears Arcadius's face.” Obarin let the mask fall to reveal his grinning face once more, a lighthearted expression illuminating his features. “At least for now.”

“What do you mean?” asked Alice, not understanding. “Have there been others?”

“Three others in the last decade,” cut in Jemhyr. “Soon to be four if this Arcadius continues to play the part of the fool.”

“One's life expectancy drops precipitously when people start calling you that,” confided Obarin in a loud stage whisper.

“What's the Compact?” asked Alice, still feeling wrong-footed.

“Ack!” Obarin clutched his chest, wincing and gasping in pain.

“What's wrong?!” Alice's eyes widened with surprise at his reaction and reached out to him instinctively.

Obarin waved away her concern with a flapping hand. “See!?” he demanded, looking at Jemhyr. “This is exactly why I told the others we needed that PR campaign!”

Jemhyr stared at Obarin for a moment before turning away, her nose in the air. “Imbecile.”

Obarin only grinned before turning to Alice who favored him with a glare of her own. “The Compact is a network of freedom fighters united with the ultimate goal of restructuring of the New Empire such that we have Common Treatment of all the New Empire's peoples. Right now, the New Empire is a corrupt nest of aristocracy and nepotism. It's a nation of brutal repression, stark contrasts in haves and have nots. It is a government ailing and doomed to failure unless we institute the long-term changes required for stability and prosperity for all of the Empire's inhabitants. For this vision, the Compact fights, organizing and rallying, preparing for a moment when we can make a difference and usher in a new era of the New Empire's history.”

Alice stared into the fire in Obarin's eyes, the man seemingly possessed with internal energy and vision. “So... you're basically rebels. Judging from this planet and Jemhyr's jumpiness, you're on the run, harried from one spot to another by the New Empire like a band of small-time criminals.”

The fired dimmed a little. “Well...” Obarin rubbed his neck, “Now that you put it like that...”

“Take me with you,” Alice blurted uncontrollably.

“Eh?” Obarin looked surprised once more.

Looking into Obarin's eyes, she could see the conviction and purpose that drove the man. On the surface, he was all smiles and jokes, but Alice could tell that the man would die in a heartbeat for the cause he ostensibly led. Equal parts admiration and jealousy rose in her breast; maybe... maybe if she was to go with Obarin and join his people, she would one day find the purpose and drive to live and die beautifully that had been stolen and torn away from her on Diode.

“Take me with you.” Alice repeated defiantly, her fists clenching. “Let me join the Compact.”

“A minute ago you didn't even know what the Compact was!” exclaimed Obarin. “Compact membership is seen as an act of treason by the New Empire. The penalty is execution; no trial, no paperwork, just a jaunt out back for a bullet or laser to the head.”

“I don't care!” Alice flared up. “What's the alternative? You drop me off at the nearest cluster of tents the natives here call a settlement? You might as well put that bullet in my head here and now.” Alice glared into the camp fire, its flickering flames reflecting in her colorless eyes. “I've got nothing left. Nothing. I might as well have a reason to die before it actually happens.”

Obarin stayed still for a full minute before breaking the silence, his voice heavy and sad. “Nothing left huh?”

Alice remained wordless, glaring at him with wide eyes, the flickering flames of the campfire reflected on her pale irises.

“Alright.” Obarin held his arm out and grasped her forearm, pressing her hand with his free hand so that she grasped his forearm as well. “The Compact accepts members from any previous walk of life and gives you a new one from this moment forward. No matter who you were or what you did, we only judge you based on who you become and what you will do.”

Alice gripped his arm in return, willing herself to believe him with every fiber of her being.

“Welcome to the Compact, Sister.”