Born in Darkness Read online

  ***

  An internal sense of time Victoria could never explain told her five days had passed since she woke. In that time, she never slept for more than fifteen minutes at a time or ate more than a few bites of food at once. Hunger became such a constant that, so long as she had something to eat when it became painful, she could ignore it. Thirst was the same way, and she only drank from her dwindling supply of clean water when she absolutely had to.

  Over those five days, she and the green-eyes fought constantly. Most of the time, they attacked her, lunging from the shadows or from overhead. When Victoria was lucky, she could ambush them instead, often ending the fight before it could truly begin.

  She grew more cautious and patient with every encounter. Memories of pain and death at the hands of similar monsters drove her on, nudging her reflexes this way or that. Every new wound taught her a new lesson that made the next fight that much safer.

  She found stairs and ladders here and there, always following them upwards. The air was warmer the higher she rose, and her stiff, aching muscles cried out for that warmth. The warmer things got, the more she realized how painfully cold that first day had been.

  “Human.”

  Victoria shot upright, instantly awake. Other than the little creature the first day, nothing ever spoke more than one or two words, usually threats or a simple declaration of, “hate!” She tried to interrogate the others she fought and killed, but none had anything to tell her. The giants never said anything, and Victoria wondered if the lumbering beasts could speak at all.

  This was different. The voice clearly belonged to one of the green-eyes. It sounded like the babble of water through pipes in the wall and the grinding of stone underfoot.

  It called again, drawing out the syllables. “Human.”

  “My name is Victoria!”

  The voice fell silent for a time, during which she tried to figure out exactly where it came from. Noises echoed strangely through the corridors where she was, and she suddenly wished it would continue talking.

  After several hours, it obliged. “Victoria,” it called, repeating her name at long intervals with no set pattern. Every time it spoke, it seemed to come from somewhere else.

  Eventually, she found herself in a maze of twisty passages, all alike. Now, the voice addressed her regularly. She held a dagger in one hand and her baton in the other.

  “Human,” it said, “why are you?”

  She ignored it, trying to follow the voice, but it repeated the question from a different direction. “I don't know!” she finally shouted.

  “What is your purpose, human?”

  “I said my name is Victoria!”

  “Name. What is a name? You are a human. Is a 'Victoria' truly any different?”

  “Yes!”

  “You are like those who came before.”

  She stopped in her tracks. The voice was close now. “How many?”

  “Many.”

  “What happened to them?”

  The voice laughed, a grating sound that tore at her bones as it echoed around her. “We happened! Thought we could be caged, they!”

  She crept slowly around a corner. The voice was very close now, with minimal echoes. “Who are you?”

  The voice retreated, further away now. “My name is not for you, human.”

  “Then what are you?”

  “I think. I speak.”

  Now, she felt herself drawn toward the voice, an urge she could not name pulling her along. “Why am I here?”

  “You are here because we are here, human.”

  “Why am...”

  Victoria rounded a corner and found herself face-to-mask with a tall, thin creature. Two long arms hung from its shoulders, reaching to its knees. A pair of shorter arms reached from below and slightly toward the center of its chest. Those it held back, hands clasped together expectantly. The head, or at least the helmet it wore, was large for its frame.

  “Hello, human.”

  “What are you?”

  “I think.”

  “Are you in charge of the other green-eyes?”

  “Green-eyes?” Again the bone-chilling laugh. “Yes, it makes sense for you to call us that.”

  “What are you?”

  The creature shrugged its shoulders in a disturbingly human gesture. “Our original purpose is irrelevant. We are trapped here with you. We want freedom.”

  That stopped her. “Freedom?”

  The creature nodded. “For three hundred times your life thus far we have wandered these halls. Food dwindles.”

  “Then why did you try to kill me?”

  “A great monster guards the exit, one which has forgotten my voice. I had to know if you could kill it so that we could be free.” It extended one of its smaller hands and clasped its longer arms behind its back. “Together.”

  Victoria eyed it with suspicion. Its words made logical sense, but every other green-eye had tried to kill her on sight. She had no reason to think this one was any different. Perhaps its intelligence gave it the capacity for reason, and it decided she was its best hope for the freedom it claimed it wanted.

  Or perhaps, she continued, it simply hoped she could be swayed because it spoke to her.

  “What will you do with your freedom?”

  “We will take our revenge on those who caged us. We will return home and bring a great fire.”

  “To the other humans.”

  “To the humans who caged us both!”

  It stood much closer to her now, and Victoria shivered automatically. She had not noticed it moving at all, so small and careful had its steps been. Its longer arms hung down by its side now, and one of the smaller hands still reached out for her in a gesture her mind kept trying to interpret as friendly.

  “I'm human. What if I refuse?”

  “Then you will die like all the others. We will feed and grow and eventually we will have our freedom and the fire will burn this place to ashes.”

  Before she could say anything else, it lunged for her. Victoria spent too much time listening to its words and it drew much too close to her. Its first strike slammed into the side of her head from below her vision, knocking her sideways and off balance. The second strike hit her ribs on the other side, sending a jolt of pain through them. Her arm spasmed with the shock, and her baton clattered to the floor.

  She dove for the thing's chest, but its smaller arms grabbed her and pulled her in closer. They were much stronger than their thin, spindly appearance suggested, and Victoria found it difficult to fight against them.

  Fortunately, she did not have to. She still had the dagger, which she plunged into the monster's skull from below, where the helmet was not armored. The visor on this one did not shatter like the others. She reached up with her other hand and ripped it off, revealing a fishbelly-white face, streaked now with vibrant, crimson blood. Its three lurid, green eyes failed to focus on anything as she drew the dagger out of its jaw and plunged it into the uppermost eye.

  It fell, and Victoria sagged backward against the nearby wall moments later. Her head pounded where the thing hit her, but her vision was fine. As always, she checked her ribs, and this time cursed. The fabric there had been torn and she bled freely from her side.

  The four-armed monster twitched, and Victoria lunged at it, driving her dagger deep into its throat and skull over and over until she was absolutely sure it was dead. Sinking back against the wall once more, she realized something positive came of their fight.

  She reached for the monster's helmet. It was streaked with gore, but her assessment had been accurate. Their skulls were nearly the same size.

  Chapter 4

  First Lord Aegesander shut the lid of his holoprojector. It locked with an audible click that he found reassuring. He stood up from his desk aboard his private liner and strode across the spacious room. His quarters on his ship were large, a reflection not only of his tastes but of his wealth, and Aegesander made sure the other Hexarchs knew it. Technically, of cours
e, all six of them were equals in all things. However, he was the oldest of the First Lords, and second most experienced, and that carried with it a certain personal requirement that he maintain a level of comfort suitable for his position.

  At the moment, however, all of the comfort in the binary would not have assuaged the tumultuous thoughts running through his brain. He poured himself a glass of water from the kitchenette in his office, downed it, and filled the glass with brandy made from grapes from First Lord Eurybia's planet. That glass, unlike the water, he planned to nurse for some time.

  The news had been no worse than he expected, Aegesander reflected as he peered into the amber liquid. It had taken five years, but Project Titan was finally paying off.

  He frowned, mulling that thought over and over in his head. Project Titan, Tritogenes's insane scheme to create a team of supersoldiers to stop the mastigas, was actually going to pay off.

  Privately, Aegesander had started to wonder if his fellow Hexarch's doomed plan would ever bear fruit. His own success was assured, his soldier ready, but until now he had his doubts about the others.

  He sipped at his brandy, thinking. Tritogenes was going to be insufferable.

  This most recent update came from First Lord Eurybia and contained information on the final iteration of her Project as well as what she could glean from First Lords Rivka and Enyalios. Hyperion remained secretive enough personally, though the details of his part of the Project were all public—his Titan loved the spotlight. Tritogenes maintained almost the opposite outlook, keeping his Project secret, but showing his face at every public event he could.

  The positive aspect of it was that Project Titan stood to make him a great deal of money indeed, especially if it did everything it was supposed to do. If it succeeded, Aegesander could bury his original arguments against it easily enough. Not only that, but the strides of research he and First Lord Eurybia made into cybernetics were going to revolutionize Technocrat industry for generations.

  He idly conjured a holo image of a woman in a blue robe with silver-white metal adorning her face. She could have been any one of a million people who thought this year that metal was the new trend, using it instead of traditional makeup. Second Lord Helena was not one of those people. She was his Titan, and that metal the end result of five years of research and development.

  And, he thought with a cold chill, that thought terrified him. Outwardly, of course, he had nothing but praise for the things he and Eurybia developed, but he had a great many misgivings about this technology. At best, it would upend current market trends, likely requiring heavy government intervention and welfare until things calmed down again.

  And it was all, ultimately, Tritogenes's idea. His frown deepened as his thoughts circled back around. He was going to be insufferable, and the utter secrecy with which he ran his Project infuriated Aegesander.

  In truth, the Lord of Limani was many things that Aegesander found infuriating, but Tritogenes's command of security earned his grudging respect. All he knew about Tritogenes's part of Project Titan was that his facility was secreted away somewhere in the outskirts of the binary system they had called home for the last eleven-hundred and eighty-one years.

  Yet, that morning, Tritogenes broadcast from an undisclosed location, claiming success and promising good news at the next Council session. He had more to say, of course, but Aegesander tuned most of it out, trying to piece together any clues that his fellow Hexarch might let slip.

  “So,” he muttered. His voice, deep and gravelly, matched his weathered face. “Tritogenes managed ... something. Somehow.”

  Still, he thought as he paced around the room, gesturing and speaking his thoughts aloud in the one place where he knew he would have privacy, Tritogenes was neither alone nor unique in his success. In a sense, he was pleased. While he would not weep at the loss in standing Tritogenes would suffer if Project Titan failed, he admitted to himself that it would also be unacceptable from a practical standpoint for nothing to come from the resources the Technocracy poured into the Project.

  Aegesander strode back to his desk and tapped the communications switch. “Second Lord Miranda.”

  There was a moment of silence before the line clicked once. “Speaking,” a female voice replied.

  “Please inform Second Lord Helena that I wish to see her within the hour in the exercise room.”

  “Understood, First Lord. Will there be anything else?”

  “That will be all.”

  Aegesander put his drink down and strode to his cabin's window. He had business at the capital before the Council meeting, and so his liner already jockeyed for position in Prosgeiosi's high orbitals. Aegesander was in no hurry, and so was content to proceed through the usual checks and procedures.

  A few minutes passed while he watched the blue and green planet turning slowly beneath his window. Aegesander then raised an arm and activated his computer's holo display. It appeared above his raised forearm in a simple, easy-to-read gray. Navigating through the menus there, he recorded a message for First Lord Hyperion.

  Aegesander cleared his throat as the message began. “First Lord Hyperion, Hexarch Pteryga, I, First Lord Aegesander, Hexarch Dasos, greet you.”

  He resisted the urge to smile as he laid the formal addresses on thick. Showing that much emotion would have been somewhat of a social overreach, even for a private message.

  “I regret to hear of your recent illness and wish you a speedy recovery. I hope that you will have recovered fully in time for the upcoming Council meeting. If you need anything, do not hesitate to contact me.”

  He stopped the recording, placing just enough encryption on it so that it would look like he “made an effort,” and sent it on its way. The odds that no one would intercept and read it as it crossed the system from his cabin to Hyperion were immeasurably small, and both Hexarchs knew it.

  They also both knew that Hyperion was not sick and had not so much as suffered from a cold in thirty years. His “miraculous recovery” before the Council meeting was surely going to cause people to talk. Perhaps they would talk enough to convince Hyperion that it was time to end his charade and actually meet with Aegesander in person.

  Aegesander returned to his drink. He and Hyperion had their differences over the years, but those issues were in the past. Surely, he thought, no reason remained for the two senior Hexarchs to ignore one another.

  He sipped his brandy, then had another thought. Rather, his mind finished churning through a series of plans and finally arrived at the most logical next step. He activated his holo again, once more paging through menus until he arrived at the communication screen. He directed, then encrypted the message carrier before dictating anything. This note he actually wanted to keep private.

  “First Lord Eurybia, I believe your current travel schedule will bring you within a short distance of Katarraktes a few days before the Council meeting. I would consider it a personal favor if you made a brief stop there and brought First Lord Enyalios to Prosgeiosi yourself.”

  With a wave, he sent the message off. Let Enyalios make of that what he would, Aegesander thought.

  Again, he frowned as his thoughts turned toward the last two Hexarchs. Tritogenes's behavior was always frustratingly difficult to predict, and he was likely going to stay in his secret base right up until the time came to leave for the Council meeting.

  That left First Lord Rivka, who already turned down Aegesander's offer of financial aid. That sent enough of a stir through the lower ranks to keep both of them busy for months, and Aegesander had not contacted her directly in nearly a year because of it. Diomedes, her predecessor, had been a compatriot of his and Hyperion's. Unfortunately, she inherited some of his tendencies which made her as supremely difficult to predict as he had been.

  Diomedes's suicide during the first mastigas attack still haunted Aegesander more than he wanted to admit. If nothing else, the sudden loss of a Hexarch, and the unusual dictate from his Will that Rivka be appointed his suc
cessor, left a gaping hole in Aegesander's knowledge database.

  More than he wanted to figure out Tritogenes's plan, Aegesander needed to know how much Diomedes told Rivka before his death.

  Aegesander finished his brandy in a single, frustrated gulp, then refilled it on his way out of the cabin. Knowing Helena, she was already there, waiting on him.

  ***

  Aegesander did his best to stay in good physical shape, and he had to admit that for a man of a hundred and fifty, he was still quite healthy. He placed a great deal of the credit for his continued health on his insistence that every ship he owned or operated contain some sort of exercise or fitness area.

  In the two years since Helena officially became his Titan, she accompanied him nearly everywhere he went. Aegesander's gym might have been set up for his own use, but as time passed, the room became hers more and more.

  As he predicted, she arrived some time before he did, despite there still being over thirty minutes left on his “within the hour” request. When he stepped into the room, Helena rose from a seated position in the middle of the open space at one end. A single twitch of her shoulders smoothed out any lingering wrinkles in her lapis-blue robes, causing them to hang with nearly mathematical precision. Like all Technocrat robes, Helena's obscured everything from the neck down, showing instead representations of her achievements—at least the ones that were not classified as “Top Secret.”

  Above the neck, she bore more physical results of her part in the Project. Polished metal sat atop the bones of her face. The pieces wrapped around and connected to one another at the base of her skull before descending and vanishing inside her robes. Six spidery, metallic legs wrapped around her skull, one pair each over her eyebrows, cheekbones, and along her jaw. The metal itself was kept polished, but pale blue color was enamel deliberately chosen to accentuate her icy eyes.

  Her hair had grown back since the implants had been installed two years before and was now gathered just above the metal nexus at the base of her skull. True to technocrat tradition, her braid was elaborate and showy. She parted it in dozens of different places to show off her implants as well. Despite the nature of the augmentations Project Titan had bestowed upon her physical body, she remained a Technocrat, and one for whom appearance and propriety remained important.