Purposeful steps carried Voy up from the depths of the engineering deck and back to admiral Hembrandt’s gold and marble domain. The tingle of an incoming comm call in the base of Voy’s neck had ceased since his intercom summons. On the whole, the Auric Wind felt different now. Few people loitered in the halls and corridors now, and those that did avoided making any contact with him. There was a serenity in this, like the calm air before a downpour. Voy left his carapace retracted for now, the quiet around him made all the more pleasant without the clang-clanging of pseudo-metal boots.

  The war room was placed near the ship’s command bunker. While not as fortified as the main bridge, and as a pleasant aside not so cramped, it wasn't quite as divorced from its military utility as the rest of the Auric strove to be. At Voy’s approach the heavy blast doors that segregated it from common access split and slid into the wall. Two guards in ceremonial yet ever functional EVA armor stood at either side. They parted to allow Voy entry, a burden of silence shared between them.

  Inside was a largish briefing room dominated at the center by a long, grey, fixed in place metal table surrounded by just as grey leather chairs. The room itself was made of the same vacsteel as the command bunker, a security feature in case the ship were breached enough that additional secure space beyond the command bunker was needed. Gathered around the table, all standing, was a smattering of some twenty officers from across the whole of the ship. Voy recognized some of them, and of those some more than others, but there were several he couldn’t recall having ever met or passed by.

  Quartermaster Dalisse he knew. The perennially awkward man stood shifting his gaze anywhere there wasn’t a person to risk looking at. Elara was present as well, her carapace was retracted and she leaned against the wall away from the table itself and behind Hembrandt. Like Voy, she was wearing only her slip-suit. This observation came with a host of distracting thoughts Voy quickly drove from the fore of his mind. One of Undahiil’s spherical drones hovered beside her as well, serving as a surrogate set of eyes for the Jeremayne while he continued his labors below.

  Between Elara and Hembrandt, two hooded figures Voy had not seen even once on the ship flanked the admiral on either side. Their robes were the blue and green combination associated with House Caldion, but they lacked the stature to suggest they were kartorim. Their hands had cables running from their arms out and back into their knuckles, implying at least some level of mechanical augmentation. Voy had nothing to prove his assumption, but that there were only two made him guess they were the archoseers he’d saved by taking the living data from the vault into himself instead of passing it on.

  Voy knew none of the others standing by the table in the room’s center by name save for Hembrandt himself. Signs of as-yet recovered injuries were peppered throughout those gathered. Several men had bandages over the little skin that went unconcealed by their uniforms, two wore slings for their arms. An eye-patch sat fixed to one man near Hembrandt, and another officer was notably was missing his right hand.

  Voy flexed his new, fabricated left hand open and closed idly as he entered the room. He bemoaned how poorly his healing capability fared compared to those of his peers, but seeing how much worse unaltered humans fared under similar punishment reminded him that it could always be worse. That they were gathered here in spite of their injuries was something Voy could respect.

  At the head of the long table furthest from the room’s entrance admiral Hembrandt stood glaring down his nose at Voy. He’d cleaned himself up recently, his uniform was fresh, pressed, and utterly at odds with the man beneath. He stood proud and put on the act of command well, but the dilation in his eyes and the vaporous smell of alcohol betrayed his recent inebriation. Nevertheless he put his best effort into containing his self inflicted handicap. With hands folded behind his back and beneath his cape, he put on his best atmosphere of condescension as he addressed Voy.

  “Nice of you to finally join us, Lord Voy. I apologize for the embarrassing use of the ship’s intercom to summon you here. I assumed your comm suite must be in a state of disrepair since the attack.” All eyes in the room turned to Voy. The pseudo-kartorim halted just past the door and locked eyes with the admiral.

  “You lied to me,” Voy did not dress his words in diplomatic sweetness or the salve of feigned uncertainty, “tell me why.” Hembrandt smiled incredulously.

  “How dare you walk into my war council, late, after ignoring your comm and muster the sheer fucking audacity to lead with an unfounded accusation?” Hembrandt shook his head and narrowed his eyes, “I’ve had men thrown off my ship for far, far less.” Voy extended his carapace over his entire body, letting the pain feed his anger. The searing tide of razors raked over his skin and solidified into armor once his entire body was encased.

  “I consider myself even tempered. Agreeable. Easy-going,” Voy began, “but if there is one thing, one thing alone I find my patience insufficient for,” Voy stepped toward the unoccupied opposite head of the table, “it is lying.” Those gathered around the table stepped back from it, save for Hembrandt.

  “The orders you gave me were over nine hundred years old. Avaron has no hand in this quest of yours,” Voy locked his glowing blue helm-eyes to Hembrandt’s, “and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you just tried to threaten me. If you truly feel strongly about it I would encourage you to look into how that went for the kartorim who breached the engines.” Hembrandt’s left eye twitched and his face drained some of its color.

  “You will divulge to me every detail of this operation, I will not be ignorant regarding the details of this mission that has made me into a traitor to my home. For the only time I hope to ever invoke it,” Voy felt disgusted with himself as he prepared his next words, “I am a kartorim. I am a lord of Thurgia and it’s defense. Most importantly, I am scion to Avaron the High Marshall himself. No rank among you eclipses my own, and in this matter I will not tolerate any insubordination.”

  As shocked and appalled gasps rippled through the room Voy felt only the vilest shame burning in his belly, but he had to gain control of this situation by any means available. If that meant pulling rank, so be it. Hembrandt scowled at him from across the room.

  “Elara, subdue him,” Hembrandt ordered coldly. Behind him his sister looked alarmed, then appalled. She flicked her gaze to Hembrandt, then Voy, then back to Hembrandt. Voy was not similarly hamstrung by hesitation. He drew his sword from over his back, gripped firmly in both hands, and placed its edge against his own neck. The hooded figures standing behind Hembrandt seemed to jump from their skin.

  “Wait! Don’t touch him!” They shouted in unison. Voy smiled victoriously beneath his helm.

  “I’ll have my answers now, Fortheo.” Hembrandt’s illusion of calm deteriorated completely. Were it a viable option to him Voy imagined he might jump over the table and take the fight up himself.

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  “Admiral, sir, perhaps it would be best if we, uhm… if we work with him, sir,” quartermaster Dalisse stammered out a suggestion for cooperation, raising his hand to arrest some of the admiral’s attention onto himself, “After all, he did repel the invaders.” Hembrandt’s nostrils flared as he let out a slow, furious breath.

  “I must caution against this sir,” another man, the helmsman by his uniform, spoke out. Fear bleed from his expression, but some tinge of conviction flowed from him as he looked at Voy. “This kartorim just admitted loyalty to Avaron. We can’t risk him passing any intel back. We must consider him a lost cause and work accordingly,” he kept his eyes on Voy while he addressed the admiral as if his gaze were the only thing keeping Voy in place.

  “I share your sentiments, helmsman Wolcott,” Hembrandt spoke through gritted teeth, “but due to his actions in the vault, we no longer have the capacity to move forward without him. A fact he evidently knows all too well,” begrudgingly the admiral waved his dismissal to Elara, who hadn’t moved from the wall to begin with. The archoseers behind him visibly relaxed.

  “What guarantee do I have that you won’t take every scrap of information I tell you back to some thurgian contact?” Hembrandt asked as though the words were poison to speak.

  “None whatsoever. This isn’t a negotiation, you will bring me up to speed on every aspect of this expedition. I will suffer no alternative,” Voy felt the room grow tense at his words, but he couldn’t afford gambling that they try to pull another wool over his eyes.

  “You would hold hostage the fate of all mankind,” Hembrandt scolded, his words slow and deliberate as though they were lifted out of him, “for a petty display of dominance.” The admiral almost shook with shackled rage.

  “Start by explaining why I shouldn’t,” Voy commanded. The admiral grumbled, released a long sigh and fell back into his chair. One hand held his head up from his face, the other hung limp over the armrest.

  “It’s not just Thurgia’s safety at risk by the Apoctillon’s prediction. If you so selfishly threaten to off yourself as a way to get our compliance you are gambling with the lives of trillions,” Hembrandt’s anger softened, becoming more desperate. Cautiously, Voy returned his sword to its magnetic lock between his shoulder blades.

  “Go on,” Voy said. Multiple sighs of relief passed through the war room.

  “I am sorry deception was necessary,” the apology drew substance from the admiral, the man sinking into himself as he accepted what he saw as a form of defeat, “but it is as I said. The future of mankind rests upon a very narrow, unpleasant, and failure-prone series of actions and conditions I cannot, we cannot, afford to shirk,” Hembrandt made a show of looking around the room, wrangling investment from all present in his words. “Your presence was deemed necessary by the Choir, per the interpretations of the archoseers you see behind me.”

  Pulling the chair in front of him out from the table, Voy sat down at the head opposite Hembrandt. The officers to his immediate left and right offered him cordial, thin lipped smiles before turning back to Hembrandt. Voy nodded to each as he settled in, his anger quelled somewhat by his perception of victory.

  “Why is my presence critical for, and let me ensure I am hearing you correctly, ‘the survival of trillions’?” Voy asked, unable to conceal the incredulity he felt for his apparent necessity. It was not Hembrandt but instead one of the hooded archoseers who answered.

  “Had you done as you were told in the vault and transmitted the command protocols to us, your role would have already been served,” the robed and hooded woman spat her reply. Voy bristled at the sudden hostility.

  “You were meant to sow doubt into our pursuers’ resolve, and force them to halt their interception when they caught up with us,” the male archoseer spoke now, his tone no less venomous than his peer’s, “This could only be achieved with you. You are the thought-dead scion of the High Marshall. The moment that was discovered, any adversary sent after us would pull back for fear of treading on Avaron’s hidden designs.”

  So he wasn’t uniquely critical at all, just his title. As Samuine had already launched his attack and withdrawn, he wasn’t even valuable for that anymore. He was a spent countermeasure. A fool who could have been infinitely less capable than he was and still served his purpose for the torchbearers and their clandestine machinations. Voy’s jaw clenched beneath his helm as he fought the hollowness growing within him. Unworthy to Avaron. Unworthy to be Treffel’s champion. Unworthy of the truth from the Torchbearers. Voy searched for something he could cling to, some purpose or goal that had yet to discard him. In the dark recesses of his mind, a pair of glowing crimson eyes met his. There was yet a monster to slay.

  “However, you didn’t transmit the data to them, and thus we have reached a divergence from what the Choir ordained,” Hembrandt reclaimed his role as speaker from the archoseers, “and into those uncharted waters we tread first with you, holding the singular thing that determines our future as a species and threatening to take it to the grave unless we play to your tune.”

  He remembered Hembrandt’s original description of the mission. They were to carry the Darkmount’s command protocols and deliver them to the ruler of Filigree. He would then command the forces that slumbered in the mountain thereafter, and repel an invading force. Voy’s blood ran cold.

  “What did you say the ruler of Filigree was called?” Voy interrupted, his voice teetering on the edge of dread. Hembrandt’s eyes widened.

  “You saw something, didn’t you? When you took the data into yourself,” Hembrandt shifted from scolding condescension to one of morbid curiosity. The archoseers interest was piqued as well, the two fixed their darkened gaze upon Voy with religious conviction.

  “I saw an army pouring from the Darkmount led by a kartorim in black armor,” Voy confessed, “and the masses behind him chanted his name as they burned down a city defended by thurgians. What was the name of Filigree’s ruler?” Voy pleaded for an answer. Hembrandt shifted nervously in his chair.

  “The Apoctillon forecasts the destruction of Thurgia, does it not?” Hembrandt asked almost rhetorically. Voy nodded impatiently.

  “What you were never told is that it is a projection with two primary outcomes based on the invasion of Filigree,” the admiral spoke with regret for actions and outcomes he’d yet to see to fruition, mourning what he would take part in creating.

  “In the first, Filigree falls to an unknown invading army and marks the beginning of the largest war since Thurgia’s founding. A war that ends in the destruction of Thurgia and the functional extinction of mankind. This version is more widely known, though many in power choose to suppress the part about mankind dying alongside the nation of Thurgia. Makes it easier to discredit the projection if it looks like Pantheon or Buffer-state propaganda,” Hembrandt laughed drily to himself.

  “The second is never mentioned, and is the reason Thurgian posture shifted from trying to win the defense of Filigree to quarantining the system it resides in,” a number of uncertain officers shot worried looks to the admiral and each other, but they were largely ignored. “In the second version, Filigree is still invaded, but rather than fall to whatever force seeks to conquer them the filigreans people repel the invading force, stopping it from ever metastasizing into a horde that sweeps over Thurgia. Mankind survives.”

  Voy wasn’t sure what he’d missed, what caveat made the second option taboo? What made it undesirable?

  “The kicker is, in the second outcome Thurgia still falls. Filigree drives back its aggressors only to become the seat of power for a new state born of the Buffer, a state which draws every world in the Buffer to itself before devouring Thurgia and a thousand worlds besides,” Hembrandt paused, checking to see Voy’s reaction. Voy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Thurgia could not fall, not ever. Every kartorim fought in it’s defense, millions upon billions of human soldiers stood vigilant in the fortress worlds lining the border with the Buffer. It was totally unfeasible.

  “And at this new states head will be a single individual that takes up command of Filigree’s defense, ruling first the world and then every step beyond it until they supplant the reigning powers. We call him simply ‘the demagogue’,” Hembrandt eyed Voy with knowing suspicion, “you saw a projection where the raikon of Filigree was leading the Darkmount’s army, didn’t you?”

  That was it, the name chanted over the winds of a battlefield that didn’t yet exist. Raikon, a word for king or champion among the filigreans. According to Hembrandt he was already the Filigree’s ruler, and it was him they were bringing the command protocols to. Not only would he slay Voy’s friends, he was destined to burn Thurgia itself and replace it with his own tyranny. Yet his role was essential for mankind’s survival, if he didn’t rise then everything was lost anyway. Voy could stomach neither outcome, neither option.

  “To save our species, we have to betray our nation and home to the whims of a Buffer state warlord?” Voy asked. Hembrandt shrugged.

  “I told you it was unpleasant. Nevertheless, now you know the truth of things. It is my hope that you will work with us despite your misgivings,” the admiral took on a sympathetic expression, “I love Thurgia, our home. I spent my best years serving in it’s defense. Everyone here believes in what Avaron built. We do what we do out of duty to his vision, not out of some self serving ambition. Tell me you see that.”

  All Voy could see was a fork in the road where he meant to go straight. Neither outcome was right, neither was a fitting end for Thurgia. Thurgia didn’t end. His friends, Samuine and Illati, deserved to live long lives, not be cut down by a savage from the Buffer. Voy would find a way to save his home, his friends, and his people… and he would do it without handing unfettered power to this ‘demagogue’.

  “It is my duty as a kartorim to take whatever action is necessary to safeguard mankind,” Voy swore his insincere allegiance to Hembrandt’s cause, “I’ll work with you.”