She found the director on the roof, struggling with the manual release lever for an escape pod that looked a lot like Lantern’s blister-ship. “Where are you going?” Callie asked. “We haven’t had that talk you promised yet.”

  The director whirled and fired an energy weapon with about the level of marksmanship you’d expect from the administrator of a large research facility. The beam went wide and scorched a section of the roof. Callie pointed her own gun. “Drop it. My aim is a lot better than yours.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, the director tossed her weapon aside. “Congratulations, Captain Machedo. You have proven even more resourceful than we anticipated. Have you bred? You might consider breeding.”

  “You Exalted do keep on underestimating me. I don’t mind. It makes my job easier.” Callie was honestly feeling pretty battered after being bound, thrown on the ground, shocked, and attacked by various guards, but she made a point of smiling and speaking like this was the easiest thing she’d ever done.

  “We grew complacent, it’s true.” The Opener folded her pseudopods before her and settled down, looking relaxed. Maybe she was putting up a front, just like Callie. “We had a very good sense of the capabilities of the resistance, and foolishly believed that you would function within similar operational parameters. Your earlier accomplishments were on the outer edge of what we could expect from the resistance, and we attributed that variance to your boldness. This, though, taking Vanaheim station… how did you do it? How did you set those prisoners free? Those collars should have been impossible to remove here without my authorization.”

  “Magic. I’m magic. Also, I’ve got technology that isn’t a hundred years old, like the human tech here… or stolen from the Axiom and barely understood, like your tech.”

  Opener went very still. “The Axiom. So. The humans have stumbled on our great secret at last. If you’d only found Axiom technology, their bridge generators, that would be bad enough. But to know of the great masters themselves? That knowledge will be your doom. The Axiom allow my race to serve, but we are a special case. If the Axiom ever notice you humans, your whole race will be extinguished. And since humans have a way of blundering around and making themselves noticed… your time in this galaxy is short.”

  “We’re doing okay. I personally destroyed an Axiom ship-building factory, and we destroyed the Axiom facility in the Taliesen system too… including the ‘great masters’ in hibernation there.”

  “You destroyed the reality engine?” She waved her pseudopods in a gesture Callie recognized as ‘great jubilation.’ “Good. The masters I serve come from a faction that opposed that project.”

  “Tell me about those masters,” Callie said. “What’s their goal? What’s the point of all this horror?”

  “The point is survival first and supremacy second. I think that’s all I have to say on the subject. It is not my place to discuss the plans of my betters.”

  Callie looked up. Landing ships were coming down from orbit, streaks of light in the sky. “The resistance is on their way to take over this facility. If you talk to me, I can prevent them from… experimenting on you.”

  “Mmm, no, that will not do. I fear I have reached the limit of my usefulness to the masters. The experiment that is my life is now done.” She dove for the weapon she’d discarded, and Callie shot at her, aiming to wound – but it was hard to do that with Liars, because they were basically a torso full of vital organs and a bunch of pseudopods they could live without. The director managed to snag hold of the energy weapon, and Callie fired again, hitting another tentacle.

  The director aimed the weapon… at herself, pressing the barrel between two of her eyes, and triggering a blast.

  Callie watched smoke rise from the Opener’s corpse, wrinkled her nose against the scent of seared flesh, sighed, and headed back downstairs.

  “We’ve taken Vanaheim station,” Wilfred said, gazing around the lobby in awe.

  Who’s we? Callie thought. Do you have a little white mouse in your pocket? She said, “It doesn’t have to be a big statue. Something modest, maybe cast in bronze. Right out front would be good. I’m happy to pose for the sculptor of your choice.”

  “Hmm? What’s that?” Wilfred was in an oblivious ecstasy of accomplishment.

  “Nothing,” Callie said. “How’s the pacification going?”

  “We’ve got all the Exalted and collaborators locked up, except for a few holdouts in one of the sub-levels, but we just sealed them off. They’ll surrender when they get hungry. The facility wasn’t that heavily staffed, really, considering how many prisoners there are. We’ve theorized for a while that the Exalted aren’t actually all that numerous. If they had enough people of their own, why would they be so focused on making chimeras to pilot their ships and operate their facilities? The Exalted are obsessed with their own superiority, they always talk about ‘elevating’ humans by merging us with their biological material, so it seems strange that they’d use humans to help run things unless they had to.”

  That was interesting. “How many of the Exalted do you think there are?”

  “Five hundred? Maybe even fewer. And that’s counting the guards, who are engineered to be big, strong, loyal, and not overly bright. The Exalted took over this system through overwhelming technological superiority – the scourge-ships, engineered plagues unleashed on anyone who resisted, and the things you call hunter-drones and we call crawlers. Their conquest was never about superior numbers, and the rebellions were a lot more widespread early on, until they got… quelled, and those of us who held on went into hiding on Niflheim. Think about it – the Exalted have their ruling three, and their second rank of nine, and those are all Exalted, but in the third rank, which is only a dozen people, they had four human-Exalted chimeras. That doesn’t suggest, to me, that they have a vast population of talent to draw from.”

  “Maybe you can hold onto the territory you’ve got here, then,” Callie said.

  “We’re going to expand,” he said. “From this position, we should be able to liberate the work farms, and mines, and the land-based factories, and that’s where the bulk of our people are held.”

  “That’s good, but we only cut off one head of the hydra today,” Callie said. “Or maybe Cerberus is a better reference.” Wilfred looked blank. “The three-headed hellhound who guarded the entrance to the underworld?”

  “We don’t get a lot of human culture out here,” Wilfred said.

  “Right. Anyway, the Opener of the Way is gone, but we’ve still got the heads of operations and surgery to take out. If we eliminated them, this system is yours again, apart from the mopping up. We should strike against those two soon, while they’re still reeling from their loss here.”

  Wilfred’s eyes drifted away from her. “We’ll definitely discuss our next steps, and I’m sure the generals will want to hear any proposals you might have.”

  Oh, shit, Callie thought.

  “You did good today Callie.” Elena stroked her hair, but Callie’s eyes remained a thousand kilometers away. “There are nearly half a million people on Vanaheim, and the rebels are in a good position to free them all.”

  “I know, but there are Axiom in this system, Elena. The Opener of the Way practically told me as much. All these experiments are in the service of ensuring their survival and supremacy, she said. The Exalted aren’t our real enemy here – they’re just the priests and handmaids and boot-lickers of the enemy. There are Axiom here, maybe sleeping, maybe awake and directing their servants – who knows? We need to find out.”

  “We can always take the White Raven and check out those coordinates on Lantern’s map,” Elena said.

  “I’m tempted. But we stand a better chance of stopping whatever the Axiom are up to if we break the control the Exalted have in this system. The resistance is focused on helping their people, and that makes sense, but there are another nine major space stations in this system where the Exalted are still in control, including the headquarters for operations and for surgery. We need to take those out. Especially operations. They’ve got ships and resources, they control the main wormhole gate to this system, and they handle all the coordination among the Exalted. My whole plan was to take out the operations headquarters next – attacking Vanaheim station first was only necessary because of the Opener’s ultimatum.”

  “Pretty big win though.”

  “I know, and I bet I won’t even get a statue. Getting a foothold on Vanaheim has actually complicated things, though, because there are so many prisoners to take care of now, it’s going to be a huge drain on the resistance’s organizational capacity and resources.”

  “You’ve accomplished more for the resistance in a few days than they managed in decades, Callie. They’re overwhelmed, but they’ll adjust. Give them time.”

  Callie closed her eyes. “What if we don’t have time? What if the Exalted decide the grand experiment of the Vanir system is a bust? What if they gather the scourge-ships they have remaining and use them for their original purpose, to scour all life from a planet?”

  “Vanaheim has orbital defenses, and the resistance has control of those now.”

  “Okay, but what if the Exalted unleash a plague?” Callie said. “We were able to beat the Exalted so far because they had preconceived notions about what humans were capable of doing, and we confounded those expectations. But the resistance is making the same mistake. They don’t believe the Exalted will wipe them out because humans are a valuable resource… but what if the Exalted have decided those test subjects are unnecessary and need to be euthanized? We need to move against the remaining heads of the Exalted, now.”

  “That is a very scary scenario, and I found your argument totally persuasive,” Elena said. “Tell the generals what you just told me, and I bet they’ll come around.”

  “I think you overestimate my persuasiveness.”

  “You got me into bed, didn’t you?”

  CHAPTER 22

  “It’s too dangerous.” Wilfred had the good grace to sound unhappy about it, at least. “I’m afraid the answer is no. We appreciate your help liberating Vanaheim, we really do, but attacking the operations control center – we just can’t take the risk. We have to focus on making sure the people we liberated are taken care of first.”

  Callie ground her teeth and glared at him through the screen. “Since I got to this system, I’ve taken a quarter of your enemy’s major facilities offline. If we attack their operations headquarters next, we can kill or capture another member of the ruling triumvirate – what’s her name, the Kicker of Puppies?”

  “The Discourager of Doubt, and yes, we know, but her headquarters is located by the wormhole gate, and that’s where the bulk of the Exalted scourge-ships are stationed – the remaining might of their fleet. We can’t possibly take those on. Even without support from the vessels you destroyed, the Exalted still vastly outmatch us in terms of firepower. We can’t do it, Captain Machedo. We’ve got sick people, injured people, hungry people – some of the things we found in those labs are so heartbreaking and horrifying, we’re putting together an ethics panel to decide which experimental subjects can be saved and which should be given a peaceful death. We’re stretched beyond thin here.”

  Callie did her best to speak calmly. “The Exalted are in disarray. If you destroy their operations headquarters, you break their ability to organize against you. If you wait, they will come for you, and they will kill you.”

  Wilfred’s stony face softened. “I actually agree with you, but I’m not the only voice that gets a say around here. I will keep working on the other generals, trying to get them to see your point of view. In the meantime, please be patient with us. We’re doing our best to take care of our people.”

  “Callie,” Shall said in her ear. “Ask him about the battleships.”

  “What?” Callie said.

  “The warships that were sent through the wormhole gate over the years – the military missions sent to investigate the Vanir system. Ask him what happened to those ships.”

  Callie trusted Shall enough to relay the question without asking why.

  “As I understand it, when ships arrived through the bridge, the operations center would hail them and claim the wormhole was malfunctioning on this side. They would pretend to be overjoyed to see ships from human systems, and beg for news, and supplies. A contingent of human collaborators would board the vessels… and take out the crews.”

  “Suicide bombers,” Callie said. “Ugh.”

  “The newcomers were always killed,” Wilfred said. “The Exalted didn’t want to risk letting people with military experience into their controlled environment here. They would take biological samples from a few prisoners, but there were never any survivors that I heard of.”

  Shall sighed in her ear. “Put me on comms please?”

  “Shall wants to talk to you,” Callie said.

  Wilfred frowned. “That’s the, ah, computer?”

  “That’s me,” Shall said. “I understand the crews were killed. But what about the actual ships? Did the Exalted destroy them?”

  “No. The Exalted aren’t the sort to throw anything away, and anyway, the Discourager of Doubt likes having the ships there, floating outside her windows. They’re her trophies.”

  “There are undamaged Jovian Imperative battleships just sitting in dry dock?” Shall said.

  Wilfred nodded. “I know what you’re thinking, but those ships are useless to us – battleships of that size require dozens of people, minimum, to operate, and we only have a handful of people who even know how to pilot scourge-ships. Even if your crew have the expertise to operate those battleships, there aren’t enough of you run them.”

  “Shall,” Callie said. “There was a mission sent to investigate the Vanir system, what, just a year or two ago? I remember hearing about it on the Tangle.”

  “There was,” Shall said. “It was some Jovian Imperative minister’s pet project – he’s one of those ancient life-extension cases, richer than god, and he had relatives who emigrated here. He sent modern ships, Callie. Three of them, I think. Do you know what I can do with modern ships?”

  “I do,” Callie said.

  “What are you talking about?” Wilfred said.

  “We’re talking about liberating the whole system,” Callie said. “What we’ve been talking about all along. Except now I see a way to do it, and I mean, like, today.”

  “There are still a lot of our people being held on Exalted facilities,” he said. “I don’t want to do anything to endanger them.”

  “They’re in a lot of danger anyway,” Callie said. “With what I have in mind… the Exalted will more worried about saving themselves than hurting your people. We’ll be in touch. You take care of the people we rescued. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “I want to be a battleship,” Kaustikos said.

  “You absolutely cannot be a battleship,” Callie said.

  “I would be a wonderful battleship.”

  “You’re a lawyer, or something,” Ashok said. “Not a military… thing.”

  “I can incorporate the contents of a military database into my consciousness just as well as Shall can,” Kaustikos said.

  “If you were a human I wouldn’t even let you carry a gun,” Callie said. “Let alone a very large, very mobile gun made out of lots of smaller guns. So drop it.”

  They’d used their bridge generator to transport the White Raven to the general vicinity of the Vanir system’s wormhole bridge – just close enough that Callie could use her personal teleporter to board one of the dry-docked warships.

  There were many ships in the Discourager’s trophy case. Callie was in the observation bay, with the windows turned into screens so she could magnify the image beyond. The operations center itself was in a hollowed-out asteroid that had once been the port authority for the Vanir colony, responsible for opening the wormhole bridge and managing traffic. That station been taken over by the Exalted and expanded with gleaming metal additions, and scores of scourge-ships floated around it like bits of dandelion fluff drifting on a breeze. Only blacker, shinier, and spikier. The captured ships that had come through the gate since the Exalted took over all hovered nearby – where, Callie supposed, the Discourager of Doubt could look out her window and feel like a conqueror.

  The buoys that marked the position of the wormhole bridge were still in place, hanging silently and lightless, a closed door to the rest of the galaxy.

  Why were there so many scourge-ships in this system? Lantern said those ships were used to cleanse intelligent life from any planets where it happened to arise. The Exalted had a whole fleet of the ships, but they weren’t interested in wholesale genocide – they were more interested in studying (and exploiting) life than in eliminating it. Doctors used scalpels, not plasma grenades, so why did a bunch of scientists have a fleet of warships? If Shaper, Discourager, and Opener were the descendants of Liars charged with exterminating life on the Axiom’s behalf, how had their mission so drastically changed? Or had the Exalted just discovered a fleet of scourge-ships, abandoned in some Axiom hangar, and decided to use the firepower to set themselves up as dictators in a distant system?

  Her reputation among her crew aside, Callie didn’t actually like mysteries. She was annoyed by mysteries. What she liked was unraveling them.

  The human warships were more familiar to her, though. There were scores of those, too, the oldest a century out of date, the newest very close to top-of-the-line Jovian Imperative kit… though not absolutely top of the line. Most of the settlers had originally come from the Jovian Imperative, and that one minister kept pushing to send missions to investigate, so the government sent a new expedition every few years. Those missions were lightly crewed and heavily armed, because at this point everyone assumed whatever was happening in the Vanir system was bad – reclusive cultists, natural disasters, doomsday cults, whatever.