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screamed, “Seal the hangar! Activate Pluto Protocol!” and the camera turned off.

  What did you see? Lucius wondered.

  The next footage was from the bridge again. “What happened?” someone asked.

  A woman stood up from her seat. “Lieutenant,” she said, “inform all Imperial vessels that we are under attack. They are clear to engage the battleship. All remaining soldiers on Burnum are to barricade the corridor outside the hangar bay. No one gets through. I will coordniate the defense myself.” She started to leave.

  “I – I can’t send any transmission,” the first voice called. “Something is blocking our communications!”

  “What?” The woman stopped and turned toward the lieutenant.

  “They’re cutting down the power–” and the video feed ended.

  Lucius could feel his teeth grinding, his lips pressed hard like a wrench. What in Jupiter’s name happened here? Why would they want to activate Pluto Protocol?

  And then a voice of one of the soldiers from the boarding party spoke in his head – Your Highness, we are inside engineering. I think you better see this.

  Lucius didn’t have to be told twice. “Stay here and protect her,” he said to his guards. “I can handle myself.”

  “We have orders to protect–”

  “It is I who gives the orders here, soldier. Remember that.” And Lucius drove out the door. On his way down to engineering he contacted Arrius to see what happened on the battleship.

  The ship has been abandoned, Your Highness.

  Same as the outpost, thought Lucius. He sent – Can it be made operational?

  Clodius thinks it can, but we would need to dismantle two merchant ships and use their parts.

  Do it. I already have two ships in mind.

  Half way down the outpost two soldiers met with him. “We are here to help you get down the stai–”

  “I don’t need any help,” Lucius snarled and kept going. And he meant it – the stairs were way easier to drive on the way down.

  “We are also here to protect you, Your Highness.”

  “From what?”

  The soldiers didn’t reply. They just followed him.

  Gods, thought Lucius, I am Lucius Cornelius Venator! The best Imperial soldier that ever existed! Even I can protect myself in an abandoned outpost!

  Once the door to engineering opened, another soldier greeted him.

  “What is it?” asked Lucius.

  “This way, Your Highness.”

  The soldier led the emperor behind a piece of machinery with large tubes and wires going to through the walls. Lucius ducked under a tube, his hand making sure it won’t hit his head. Behind the machinery he felt his wheels slowing down. But it wasn’t the floor. Something was playing tricks with his mind. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He blinked as if to drive away the image, but it was still there – hundreds of empty tanks sprouted in front of him like a forest of glass trees.

  The solder next to Lucius moved aside, to show that there were more tanks.

  “What is this?” Lucius asked.

  “We think something was growing inside, Your Highness.”

  “Growing? Cyons don’t grow in tanks.”

  The soldier nodded. “Indeed, Your Highness. There is more. This way,” he said.

  At the end of the row they turned right and stopped in front of a tank that caught Lucius off guard. The tank was way taller than Lucius ever was, maybe two meters in height, green liquid reaching to the top. He saw tubes and wires coming from the ceiling above him into the tank, attaching to something – something he recognized.

  “Get Modius in here,” he said. “Now.”

  AILIOS

  “Friseal, we already talked about this,” said Ailios without even looking at him. His eyes stared at Palatine as it grew larger with that thin atmosphere of hers, full of radiation. He then turned to Friseal. “Quit vexing us already. You heard what happens when someone vexes Faragar, didn’t you?”

  The chameleon had the color of the green broadleaf plants that hung inside the ship’s bridge. He was afraid already. He then looked up into Faragar’s thirsty eyes and turned even greener. “Umm, no, I don’t want to vex Faragar. I mean, I don’t want to vex anyone. It’s just the right thing to do, Ailios, can’t you see? Talam is doomed to fall anyway. Just look at that vast fleet in orbit. We have to make our move, now. We won’t have a better chance, I assure you.”

  Ailios couldn’t agree more. The ship’s sensors picked up three hundred-odd military ships maneuvering in orbit. Major Ailig said the Cyons had four hundred of them.

  “Where could we go, Friseal?” Ailios asked. “Talam is our home. We can’t let these metallic creatures take it away from us. Besides, you heard the major – no escape plotting,” he said trying to imitate his stern voice.

  “Forget Talam,” Friseal said. “Forget Cyons and humans and whatnot. I’m tired of this war, honestly. We can make it to the asteroid field. I know of certain people who have bases there and live quite fairly.”

  “You do realize we need oxygen to survive,” said Ailios. “If something goes wrong in the asteroids we are as good as dead. So excuse me, my color-changing-fellow, if I don’t share your enthusiasm. I intend to live few more hundreds on Talam and when my time comes, die there.” Faragar growled his approval. Friseal opened his mouth to speak again, but Ailios interrupted him with a raised finger, “A! No more, Friseal. Or I’ll feed you to Faragar.” Friseal closed his mouth and swallowed. Ailios wasn’t going to feed him to Faragar, not truly. But Friseal was becoming a nuisance and he had to shut him up somehow. Ailios then turned to Olivia. “You sure this will work?” he asked.

  “You mean keeping Friseal quiet?” she asked with a teasing smile.

  “No. Feel free to read my thoughts again. I mean this plan of yours. We’re already too close for comfort.”

  “Nervous?” she asked, not moving the smile off her face.

  “I just don’t want to die yet, is all.” Gods, I do feel nervous, and scared … a little. I’m becoming like Friseal.

  “You are becoming like him,” she said. Ailios made a grimace. He hated when she read his thoughts. “Our contact gave us a Cyon IFF,” she explained. “They’ll think we’re one of these scavenger ships.” Those ships she spoke of were now visible through the window, collecting junk and debris around Timor, cleaning after the riots.

  Ailios never saw Timor before. Well, not from up-close that is; He’d only seen few pictures here and there. But he read about it a lot. Apparently there were treasures to be found, but he doubted he would find any. Timor was way too famous in ancient texts to be left unchecked by other raiders, he was certain of it. But beyond that he hoped there was something left. Timor was, after all, a moon of the Cyon home world. Maybe there were no crazy humans risking their lives out there for a piece of gold. Talam had thousands of ancient temples worth checking out. If anything, Timor would be the last place to look.

  Now Ailios had the chance to do that. He stared through the window as the moon grew steadily larger. The sun had enlightened half of its surface in bright colors of red and orange and even white in some areas. Meteor impacts had scarred the entire moon, but it was still smoother than Palatine’s other moon Formido. From what Ailios could see there were only craters and rocks and abandoned Cyon outposts. He couldn’t see the temple yet.

  If he remembered the pictures correctly, this temple was supposed to be round. Also, he remembered the giant satellite dish in the center of the temple that was tilted to the side. It was said that the dish now revealed a massive entrance pit where it stood before. But Ailios still couldn’t see anything of that just yet.

  “You better suit up,” Olivia said. “We are getting closer.”

  All of them except Olivia stood up. “Not you, Friseal,” said Ailios. “They say chameleons are bad luck in sacred places.”

  Friseal’s eyes bulged. “They do?”

  No, but you’re too damn annoying. “I think you shoul
d stay here with Olivia,” Ailios said. Because if you come with me I might let Faragar eat you for real this time.

  Olivia shook her head. “You’re insane,” she said. Friseal sat back, relieved.

  Ailios kneeled and pulled a lever on the floor. A hatch toward the lower deck opened. He turned to Olivia. “Bring the ship in the middle of the temple. There’s a giant satellite dish. You can’t miss it.”

  And all three climbed down a ladder. Ailios thought of Major Ailig’s words then, “You will have the best ship our fleet has to offer,” he said. If this was it, Ailios was certain that Talam was doomed to fall. This was by far the smallest, most ridiculously looking ship he ever saw. There were two decks, one above his head where the bridge, the bathroom, and the bunks were, and the second deck where the armory, the locker room, and engines were located. And that was it. Everything was cramped to make the ship smaller. “It’s not the size that counts,” Major Ailig said when he saw how Ailios was looking at the ship back on Talam. “It’s faster than any other ship in the UDF.” Ailios thought then how hopeless their mission was with such ship. He still thought the same, but if it was indeed as fast as the major claimed, then maybe they had a chance of getting out of trouble in time. “Only people with low self-esteem are obsessed with the size of things,” Ailios said to the major. Then he realized he was obsessed with the size of this thing – the yellow ship shaped like a robotic dolphin with two angle-adjustable engines on its tail – now standing clamped in front of him. From the outside he couldn’t even tell which part of the ship was the bridge and which part was the infirmary. In the end it turned out there was no infirmary but a cabinet full of medical supplies. I better not get shot, he remembered thinking then.

  Ailios mumbled the same words as he opened his locker and pulled down a blue Bio-suit and a white helmet with a large transparent visor.

  He was the first to suit up, so while he waited for Faragar and Luthis to suit up, he played with his heads-up display for a moment, adjusting which information to be shown. Eventually he chose temperature inside his suit, remaining oxygen and pressurization, and distance to his teammates.

  Faragar hit a fist into his palm. “I’m ready,” he said.

  Luthis struggled with his helmet for a while. “How do you put this thing on?” he asked, trying to force it down on the rings on his neck.

  Faragar chortled and grabbed Luthis’s helmet with one hand. “Stay still,” he said. He put the helmet on Luthis’s head and turned it until the locker rings clicked. “There.”

  “Oh, was that it?” asked Luthis.

  Ailios opened another hatch on the floor and all three came down into a small airlock chamber. There they lay. Ailios fumbled with his gloves to take out a steel cable from a tiny box on his stomach and attach it to a belay device on the overhead. His teammates did the same. Now all they could do was to wait.

  After a minute or so, his palms started getting wet, his stomach fluttered, and his foot nervously rapped the bulkhead – he was going to enter one of the oldest temples in the history of mankind. How many people could boast with that?

  “Team, suit check,” said Ailios, to pull his thoughts away from the temple, to calm down.

  Both the brute and the mover confirmed that everything was in order. “Weapons check.” Ailios’s hand moved to his waist where he had his pistol. The touch of the metal brought weird kind of relief. He never used projectile weapons before, only his spear, but he was certain that a pistol would be more welcome this time.

  “I don’t need a bloody weapon,” said Luthis. “I’m a mover. And I have my ball right here.” He tapped his side pocket.

  “You will need a pair of them if we encounter any sect members. But either way you are required to have a weapon. Well, do you?”

  Luthis exhaled. “I do have one.”

  “Thank you,” Ailios said. “See, it wasn’t that