Aetheral Space

The walls of the main hall were covered with thousands of tiny statues, carved right out of the stonework. At first, Dragan had trouble telling what they were supposed to be - they just seemed like lumps of rock - but when Helga shined her light over them, he understood.

Flies. Thousands of tiny stone flies, frozen in imitation of their insect ecosystem - climbing over each other, feeding on simulacra carcasses, planting their proboscises deep into the walls beneath them. Some were fairly normal-looking houseflies, but the majority were much stranger breeds, bearing oversized mandibles and fangs and even tusks. They were as if someone had been given the barest description of a fly and had just gone nuts with it. Dragan shuddered.

"Elizabeth," mused Helga, running her light over the carvings. "The Lady of Flies."

"Hell of a nickname," said Dragan, eyes fixed on the wall, as if the statues would come buzzing to life any second.

"A lot of the Gene Tyrants had them," said Dian, another of the Humilists that Helga had enlisted for this little escapade. He was a lanky, pale man with a nose so sharp it looked like it could break through stone. "There was Victoria the Chitin Knight, Nefertiti of the Hunter's Gaze, Zenobia the Deep…"

"When you can change your form whenever you want," said Helga. "I suppose your name is the only constant thing about you. No surprise you'd want to pretty it up a bit."

Dragan raised an eyebrow. "You don't see Umbrants taking on all those fancy nicknames - and they can change their appearance all they like."

Helga waved a hand. "Well, that's different. Umbrants can change their voice and hair, maybe adjust the shade of their skin a bit, but that's nothing compared to what the Gene Tyrants were capable of. I mean - changing your own genetic structure at will. Can you even imagine?"

As those last words left her lips, she looked strangely sad for a moment, but quickly perked up.

"Okay!" she said, standing up away from the wall she had been inspecting. "I wonder if we can find Elizabeth's personal quarters - some Gene Tyrants just turned into an amorphous mass and rested in a basin, but I wonder if she used an actual bed…"

Dragan rolled his eyes. He really shouldn't have agreed to this. Come to think of it, had he agreed to this? It was more like Helga had decided that this was what was happening, and Dragan had just been forced to go along with it.

They were stood in the main hall of the palace - him, Helga and her assistant Dian. Apparently, Helga was wanting to map the place out fully so they could mount a second, bigger expedition after she returned to the Humilist fleet.

The space was truly cavernous, everything oversized. Empty portrait-frames lined the walls, their contents either looted at some point or burnt during the Thousand Revolutions. A huge table had once spanned the length of the room, but all that remained of it now was shattered and rotten fragments of wood. A huge metal chair - not quite ornate enough to be called a throne - lay on its side, rust slowly devouring it. Dust hung in the air like a dense fog.

"Listen," said Dragan, holding a hand close to his mouth to avoid breathing in too much of the dust. "How much longer do you think this'll take? I'm going to be needed to finish the preparations for our ship. I don't have that much free time, you know?"

A complete lie. For one, Dragan wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do with a ship. For another, he had nothing but free time. It was strange, really, going from the adrenaline he'd experienced on Caelus Breck to the almost boring calm here on Yoslof.

"Only a couple more hours," said Helga, shining her light all around the room - as if scared she'd miss something if she didn't look closely enough.

"I thought we were only meant to be in here for an hour or two in the first place."

Helga looked away, instead inspecting a half-smashed statue of a girl in a flowing dress. "Well, you know … plans change. I wasn't expecting the history here to be so, so…"

"So historic?" said Dragan, droll.

She snapped her fingers, grinning. "Yes! You completely understand! It's like we're walking in the shadows of giants!"

Dian offered him an understanding, long-suffering smile as they walked on. Clearly this kind of behaviour was nothing new.

Walking in the shadows of giants, huh?

It was a nice turn of phrase, but from the look in Dian's eyes it looked like it was one that was trotted out often.

Personally, Dragan didn't quite like the idea of walking on giant's shadows. All it did was make it easier for them to smash you underfoot. He wasn't a big history buff, but there had to be a possibility that the Gene Tyrants had left their former palaces littered with traps before their extinction. It was what he would have done.

Dragan sidled up to Dian. "Be honest," he said, out of the corner of his mouth. “How long do you think this'll take?"

"A while," Dian said just as quietly. "She'll want to find the living quarters for Elizabeth's Pugnant guard, too, and probably the place her Cogitant attendant spent their time. Then she'll want to know where Elizabeth did her experiments, and that'll be a whole other thing. Sorry, bud."

Dragan sighed, trailing behind a little to stare into the eyes of the flies in the walls. Why, oh why did he have to be so charitable and kind?

-

Skipper tutted as the computer refused him yet again.

He’d been adjusting the fuel uplink on the Veritas, hoping to trick the ship into thinking it was getting the right kind of fuel. Usually, the safeguards built into star-yachts like this one would mean that the ship would just refuse to fly if the fuel on-board wasn’t the right grade, but that didn’t necessarily mean that lower-grade fuel didn’t work for a ship like this. It’d fly just fine if the systems would let it.

Well, it would fly fine for a while. Then it’d probably blow up. But there was a beautiful sweet spot there where it wouldn’t explode, and they could fly quite merrily during that

“You trust him?” asked Bruno, crouched over the actual physical pipes that transferred the fuel from storage to the engines.

“Hm?” said Skipper, looking up.

“Hadrien,” said Bruno, face dark. “The Hadrien brat. You trust him?”

Skipper smiled. “I trust everyone, Bruno. You know that.”

Bruno’s face shifted into Serena’s, who rolled her eyes theatrically. “Bruno doesn’t like him. He thinks he’s going to betray us.”

“You don’t much like anyone, Bruno,” said Skipper, still smiling. “It’s a thing I’ve gotten used to.”

“I like people plenty,” muttered Bruno. “When they give me reason to like them.”

Skipper sighed, swung around in his seat to face Bruno. “The kid saved Ruth’s life, and mine too. He could have let that Special Officer kill us and go back to his life, but he didn’t. To me, that’s worth giving a shot.”

Serena came out again for a moment, but Bruno reasserted control, turning fully away from the fuel pipes to face Skipper. His brow was a sharp ‘v’ of anger. “Listen. I’ve heard your story about how he shot the Special Officer or whatever. Now, I’ll admit, I wasn’t there, so I can’t say for sure, but-”

Skipper nodded.

“But,” continued Bruno, raising a finger. “My time working espionage for the UAP is telling me this all reeks a little familiar. This kind of thing is exactly how a covert insertion goes. You ask me, he’s here to spy on us until we give him a bigger fish. It’s all an investment.”

“Sounds paranoid to me.”

“Sounds smart,” Bruno snapped. “You trust someone when you shouldn’t, that’s it. We should know that better than anyone.”

“We?”

“Me and Serena.”

“You’re making a mistake if you think I haven’t learnt that lesson too, kid.”

Bruno thumped the wall with his hand, purple Aether swirling around it to allow him to clench it into a fist. “If that’s the case,” he hissed. “Why are you doing this? You trust him, you’re going to regret it. I can guarantee that - one-hundred percent.”

Skipper sighed, closed his eyes - and when he opened them again, they were like ice. “Bruno,” he said calmly. “I trust everyone. Everyone. There isn’t a person alive who’s been able to betray my expectations. Do you understand me?”

A moment of silence settled over the ship. Skipper’s eyes drilled into Bruno’s.

“Bruno,” he said again. “Do you understand me?”

Bruno nodded. “Yeah,” came his quiet voice. “Yeah, I understand you.”

-

Dragan sighed.

The palace was like a maze - no, a maze implied that the architect intended for people to get lost. It implied some intelligence applied to the design of the building. The palace was more like someone had built a nice castle, then built another nice castle around that, and kept going until you had a Fabergé egg so intricate you couldn't even find the front door.

Dian was leaving a trail of some glowing blue liquid behind them as he walked - he had a belt with a few bottles of the stuff strapped to his waist.

Personally, Dragan would have thought string would have been just as good, but he supposed that the wardrobe habits of the Humilists meant they couldn't spare any fabric they got their hands on.

Dragan spoke up, and was surprised by just how hoarse his throat was. It had been a while since he'd said anything. "Okay, this is getting ridiculous now."

Helga turned around - she'd been merrily walking along at the head of the group, turning her head to take in every last detail of every last hallway. "Huh?" she said, cocking her head in genuine confusion.

"We've been in here for hours," said Dragan, shaking the last bit of water in his canteen into his mouth. "Mapping out a place like this takes more than three people. If the guys you have here now aren't enough, then you should wait until your second expedition. Otherwise you'll just be here forever."

Helga frowned, and for a moment Dragan actually felt bad. Then he remembered that he'd been following her around a ruined mega-castle for half a day and stopped feeling bad.

"You really think so?" she said quietly. "What if someone gets to it while we're gone?"

Surprisingly childish. When Dragan had observed her leading the other Humilists in the camp, she had seemed a mature leader with a degree of self-restraint. Here, in the ruins, she was a kid in a candy store.

From watching her, Dragan could tell neither of those sides was an act - she was just someone who was very malleable.

"I really think so," he said wearily. "If you're that worried, just leave a few of your guys behind to watch the place while you return to your fleet. That way you know the castle won't just walk off."

He'd intended to just come up with some excuse so he could get out of the palace as soon as possible, but he seemed to be coming out with actual advice. Surprising.

She looked at Dian, seeking his opinion. He shrugged. He wouldn't say it, but he probably felt the same way as Dragan.

"Well..." she said reluctantly, dragging the word out as far as it would go, cupping her chin with a gloved hand. "I...I suppose. I suppose that would be okay."

Dragan grinned, sweet relief coming to him. Finally … finally he would see daylight again. And not have to listen to someone telling him how fascinating the Gene Tyrants were for five hours straight.

“Okay!” he said, clapping his hands together. “Then back we go! That liquid stuff should still be lasting, right, Dian?”

Dian nodded. “Aye. Lasts a couple of days.”

“Good stuff, good stuff. Let’s go.”

Their march back was in the opposite formation - Dragan and Dian leading the way, as Helga trailed sulkily behind them. Well, she could sulk all she liked. Dragan hadn’t signed up to indulge her historical fantasies at any point. It wasn’t like she couldn’t come back, either.

As they walked out of the inner palace, Dragan thought for a second that he saw a shadow shift in a far-off hallway - but when he looked again, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just a trick of the light, he supposed.

Right?